Towing a popular line among industry and nuclear power advocates, executives at Exelon’s recently-named spin-off company Constellation said this week that the federal government can’t achieve its climate objectives without giving nuclear energy a hand.
“[I]f we bring in new renewables, and all they do is replace lost nuclear generation, we will be running in place,” said Kathleen Barrón, Constellation’s chief strategy officer, during a Wednesday call with investors. Preserving nuclear power is cheaper than replacing it with other sources, Barrón said, and nuclear power is capable of delivering power that operates “during the times of the day, and the days of the year, when customers need electricity.”
“I think we all understand our 24/7 emissions free power plants are not a melting ice cube,” said Joe Dominguez, CEO of Constellation. “They are not the climate problem — they’re a big part of the climate solution.”
The federal government, Dominguez said, is starting to come around to that idea.
“Republican and Democratic policymakers … increasingly recognize what most experts have been saying all along: we need nuclear energy if we’re going to have any chance to curb carbon pollution,” said Dominguez.
“2021 was the year this reality came to Washington, and preserving nuclear became orthodoxy,” Barrón said. “It’s really now unacceptable to be a serious climate advocate, and be opposed to the continued operation of our country’s nuclear plants.”
Indeed, the Joe Biden administration has taken some initial steps to prop up the U.S.’s existing nuclear fleet. President Biden in November signed into law a trillion-dollar infrastructure package, which included around $6 billion in tax credits for economically-troubled nuclear plants. The Department of Energy has until March to work out a process for auctioning off those credits, according to the legislation.
Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in November approved the then-unnamed Constellation’s application to take over the licenses of Exelon’s 17-plant nuclear fleet. Those sites include four currently under decommissioning: Zion and Dresden in Illinois, and Peach Bottom and Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 reactor in Pennsylvania.
Exelon in February 2021 announced that it would split its business between two spin-off companies, one for its electric and gas utilities and the other overseeing the company’s nuclear, wind, solar and hydroelectric portfolio. Exelon has said that the split should be complete in Q1 of this year.
