Nuclear power in the United Kingdom became a public limited company, British Nuclear Fuels plc, wholly owned by the UK government. A Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) was opened at Sellafield in 1994. Construction had begun in the 1970s and cost £2.4 billion. The Sizewell B nuclear power plant was built and commissioned between 1987 and 1995, and began producing power for the national grid in February 1995. Its construction followed a four-year, 16 million-word public inquiry. As of 2014 it is the most recent nuclear plant to be constructed in the United Kingdom. Sizewell B was intended to be the first of a series of
Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station urban area. Originally planned in 1967, with construction starting in 1969, the station started generating electricity in 1983, and was completed in 1985, initially being operated by the Central Electricity Generating Board. With privatisation of the UK's electric supply industry in 1990, the station has been owned by Nuclear Electric and British Energy, but is now owned and operated by EDF Energy. On 18 October 2010 the British government announced that Hartlepool was one of the eight sites it considered suitable for future nuclear power stations. With the economic success of another advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) nuclear power station at