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
Heysham nuclear power station 1 unit 1 will operate on six out of the eight boilers until a detailed repair strategy has been developed. The construction, which was undertaken by a consortium known as National Nuclear Corporation (NNC), began in 1979 and the station opened in 1988. Its generating capacity is 1250 MWe, and it is estimated to keep running until at least 2030. Heysham 2 shares its reactor design with Torness nuclear power station and is a development of the reactor design used at Hinkley Point B. The reactors were supplied by NNC and the turbines by NEI. Heysham nuclear power station Heysham