CHICAGO - As crude oil leapt Tuesday (May 6) to a record $122.73 a barrel, and one analyst suggested the price might soon reach $200, America would seem poised for a nuclear power resurgence.

But enthusiasm for a nuclear future was muted at an industry conference Tuesday in Chicago, as executives acknowledged that financial, regulatory and waste storage hurdles have raised uncertainties about costs. Other factors increasing the expense of construction include high demand for nuclear plants among emerging countries along with limited supplies of reactor parts and increased prices for iron, steel and concrete.

As a result, the estimated price of a nuclear reactor has more than doubled to upwards of $9 billion in less than a year, according to industry estimates.

"I am emotionally biased but economically objective about this,'' said John Rowe, chief executive of Chicago-based Exelon Corp., the country's largest nuclear operator. "Realistic expectations about the 'renaissance' of nuclear power suggest that it will unfold slowly over time.''

There are 104 nuclear power plants in the U.S., with construction beginning on the most recent one in 1977. And as concerns about global warming have displaced fears about a reactor meltdown, the industry and government are looking to update and expand a rapidly aging electric grid with an energy source that does not emit greenhouse gases.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has nine applications for 15 plants. "We knew this day was coming, and we do not intend to be a roadblock,'' said Dale Klein, Chairman of the NRC. "But I have also said many times that our ability to review applications quickly depends directly on the quality and completeness of those applications.''

The NRC is also laying groundwork to regulate the recycling of spent nuclear fuel, a particularly crucial issue as lawsuits and political pressure has prevented nuclear producers from depositing radioactive waste centrally in Yucca Mountain, which is located in Nevada.

Citing national security, President Gerald Ford banned reprocessing nuclear fuel in 1976, a policy formalized a year later by Jimmy Carter. But as more radioactive waste gets produced, the industry will eventually need to find some kind of solution.

"If we had all this trouble over one Yucca Mountain, do we really want to have this problem over 10 (of them)?'' Rowe said in an interview.

Each of those plants must also pass the scrutiny of state bureaucracies, local governments, environmentalists, design engineers, master welders and, perhaps most importantly, the bond-rating agencies that determine financial credit.

For each kilowatt-hour of electricity generated, nuclear power claims to be cheaper than coal or natural gas, which represents about 80 percent of the country's electric output.

Because coal and natural gas also serve as alternatives to petroleum, they follow increases in crude oil prices. The difficulty faced by the nuclear industry is that construction costs are comparatively high to these other sources, while operating costs are lower, said Stephen Brown, director of energy economics at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

To spur construction, the federal government set aside $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for the industry. But with Florida Power & Light Company planning to open two new reactors by 2020 at a cost of $18 billion, those guarantees would fail to cover an entire industry that claims it must complete as many as 30 nuclear plants within 20 years to limit carbon dioxide emissions.

A loan guarantee would minimize the risk associated with building a nuclear power plant, making it cheaper for the utilities to borrow money.

The Nuclear Energy Institute's president rattled off steelmakers, college students and rural homeowners as the recipients of more than $1.1 trillion in federal loan programs. "Please don't tell me the nation's electric infrastructure is any less important,'' said NEI president Frank "Skip'' Bowman to a sympathetic audience. "The consumers of electricity will be the beneficiaries, since it lowers the cost of consumption.''

While Exelon argues that atomic fission is a more affordable energy source per each ton of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere, the industry still has harsh critics inspired by a 1979 film.

"Don't underestimate the damage done by 'The China Syndrome' and Jane Fonda,'' Bowman warned.

Critics of the nuclear industry said they hoped to show a documentary movie about the 1986 reactor explosion at Chernobyl in the Ukraine during the conference, but they were not allowed to book a room at the Fairmount Hotel, which hosted the event.

They contend that nuclear plant construction costs have been almost as stable as weapons-grade plutonium. A 2003 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology predicted a reactor would cost $2 billion, while the non-profit Keystone Center in Colorado estimated last June that a reactor would run about $4 billion.

Dave Kraft, director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service in Evanston, Ill., views this as further evidence that the free components of a summer weekend - sunshine and a cool breeze - will be better energy sources for consumers.

"Those are far superior choices and they can come on-line much faster than new nukes,'' Kraft said. "The nuclear industry is well overplaying their hand.''