Estevan played host to another Small Modular Reactor engagement session, hoping to educate people about the future of power generation.

The engagement process has been ongoing since the initial SMr announcement a few years ago and now SaskPower is focusing on some of the most frequently asked questions.

Those centered around how water would be used for the project, what kind of safety implementations would be at the site, and how waste from an SMR would be handled.

Local resident Kevin Ross says that he learned a good bit from the session.

"It was really informative, we saw some interesting things about the coal generation in Saskatchewan, what role that plays, and what role nuclear is going to play in the future and they gave us a timeline as far as when it's going to be built if It's going to be built at all and what other sources of power can be made."

Ross says that after seeing the project he's still on the side of the SMR as base capacity is needed in the province.

"On the project of nuclear no, I'm 100% in favor of it because I don't see any other alternatives. But because both wind and solar are not 100 per cent guaranteed to be generating power we need something that's constant."

Meanwhile, Yorkton Buffalo Party Candidate Timothy Kasprick was also at the session and brought up the price and new model as some of his main concerns with the project.

"They didn't have a price tag for it, so I'm pretty concerned about that because I don't want to pay four or five times more for electricity. I want to know the price tag,= and the pictures that they have of the SMR is actually the artist's conception, it's not a real one, it's a picture that an artist drew of one they're building in Ontario."

"We've had nuclear reactors for a long time, but this particular model is closer to a prototype and I use a lot of farm equipment and a lot of farm manufacturers, whether it's Borgo or George Morris or seed hawk or seed master, they put their prototypes in the field for years and years before they sell them and I'm concerned this is a prototype that's not ready for action and no limit to the price that it will cost us."

The session also included talks about nuclear waste and how that would go to a facility in Ontario until a repository could be made.

"The nuclear waste, they had a good diagram. They're showing that some of the nuclear waste in Canada right now has been stored above ground going on 60 years. I'm thinking of Estevan and thinking of the nuclear waste being here above ground, where scary things can happen for decades. The staff here was very open about what that's going to be, so the staff are nice, but I am concerned this isn't the right model for us."

Kasprick says he would prefer to have the SMR built after a similar model in Ontario is set to be completed in 2029, so this SMR is proven.

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