Shifting powerplant markets, supply bottlenecks, volatile equipment prices, global competition for powerplant materials and shortages of specialty craft and professional labor have conspired to produce what one source calls sticker shock” for powerplant owners. Price escalation is up from five years ago, driven by market conditions that have allowed “profiteering” by makers of specialty products, according to another source.

Coal-fired powerplants have held the field for the last four or five years, but they are about to yield to combustion turbines. That shift and the gathering momentum for new nuclear power construction portend many new challenges for a construction market that has already been through the cost-escalation wringer in recent years.