Exelon Corp., Chicago, plans to split into a pair of companies by early 2022, separating its power generation businesses — including nuclear — from its electric and gas sales and distribution businesses, the company announced this week.
Exelon operates 15 nuclear plants across the country, though it plans to shutter the Byron and Dresden plants in Illinois this year. The company made the proposed split public alongside their fourth quarter earnings report on Wednesday. The fissioning will create a pair of publicly-traded companies: one for its regulated electric and gas utilities and another for nuclear, wind, solar, hydroelectric, and natural gas.
Exelon plans to complete the separation by the first quarter of 2022, the report said. As of December 31, the company had some 87,100 spent nuclear fuel assemblies, or 21,600 tons of spent fuel, stored on site at power plants, either in pools or dry casks. That’s according to Exelon’s latest 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
As for its low-level waste disposal, Exelon ships its Class-A waste to either of the EnergySolutions disposal sites in Utah and South Carolina, according to the 10-K report. The company currently sends its Class-B and Class-C waste to the Waste Control Specialists site in Texas, the report says, and it will do so until 2032.
Concerning Byron and Dresden, Exelon has cited “revenue shortfalls” as the reason for their closures. The company’s Braidwood and LaSalle plants, also located in the Land of Lincoln, are at “high risk for premature closure,” Exelon said last year.
Exelon’s fourth-quarter net earnings were roughly $360 million, or $0.37 a share, the company reported Wednesday, down from $773 million, or $0.79 a share, a year ago. The 2020 quarter included, among other things, one-time charges associated with the nuclear plant retirements and COVID-19, the company said. Quarterly revenue fell to just over $8 billion from around $8.3 billion last year.
For the year, net income decreased to a little under $2 billion, or $2.01 a share, from about $2.9 billion, or $3.01 per share in 2019. Annual revenue in 2020 slid to about $33 billion from almost $34.5 billion in 2019.
