[catz]

I did not read the whole article - just scanned through it (it is long). Firstly, it Focusses on a reactor in Finland and most of those costs are very recent.

Your stats of the above is probably based on this part:

> In October 2007, Moody’s Investor Services piled on with a report projecting that new reactors would cost $5,000 to $6,000 per kilowatt to build, or up to $12 billion per unit. This figure, which was based on actual bids for new reactors in the United States, caused considerable sticker shock.

Current prices for nuclear reactors shot up extremely over the past 5 years. This is because nuclear power became an option for a lot of countries (with global warming fears). The problem with this is that it increased costs significantly.

Being a very specialized field, construction of new nuclear power stations can not just be increased as demand increases. As a good example - there is only one company that can forge a reactor vessel in one step - and it has a backlog of more than 5 years.

See this for an example: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=ho...