Basically no one wants to finance them because they are too expensive and risky (financially).
Here’s an interesting preprint paper (pdf) by Amory Lovins. It is fairly readable, well footnoted and the pages are short (although there are 52 of them).
A snippet:
“…
At the end of 2007, the world had 439 operating nuclear stations totaling 372 GW (billion watts) of net generating capacity with an average age of 23 years—a year older than the 117 reactors already shut down. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says 31 nuclear units were under construction in 13 countries—eight more than at the end of 2004, but ~20 fewer than in the late 1990s. All but five were in Asia or Eastern Europe; yet the Asian Development Bank has never financed one, and reaffirmed this policy in 2000, nor has the World Bank, with a minor 1959 exception.
Much of the reported activity is not new: of the 31 units listed as under construction, 12 have been so for at least 20 years, some were started in the 1970s, and two longmoribund projects have been re-listed. Turning ambitions into actual investments, firm orders, and operating plants faces fundamental obstacles that are now first and foremost economic, since the political obstacles related to safety, waste, proliferation, etc., can be and in many countries have been bypassed by fiat. The economic evidence below confirms that new nuclear power plants are unfinanceable in the private capital market because of their excessive costs and financial risks and the high uncertainty of both. During the nuclear revival now allegedly underway, no new nuclear project on earth has been financed by private risk capital, chosen by an open decision process, nor bid into the world’s innumerable power markets and auctions. No old nuclear plant has been resold at a value consistent with a market case for building a new one. And two strong global trends—greater transparency in governmental and energy decision-making, and wider use of competitive power markets—are further dimming nuclear prospects.
…”
http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E08-01_AmbioNucIllusion.pdf
