Business Week:

The U.S. nuclear industry believes that delays and cost overruns, which helped kill new plant construction in the late 1970s, are less likely today, thanks to now-standardized reactor designs and a streamlined U.S. government licensing process. That process has yet to be tested, though, and costs for new plants are climbing. Two years ago, the price of a 1,500-megawatt reactor was pegged at $2 billion to $3 billion. Now it’s up to $7 billion and rising, as the cost of concrete, steel, and other materials and labor soars. MidAmerican Energy Holdings (BRK), a gas and electric utility owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK), shelved its own nuke plan earlier this year, saying it no longer made economic sense. “The country badly needs new nuclear plants to deal with the climate issue,” says John W. Rowe, chief executive officer of Exelon (EXC), currently the largest nuke operator, and chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s trade group. “But they are very expensive, very high-risk projects.”