That’s not true. I was seconded to SaskPower at the time. They were up to their eyeballs back then in the Boundary Dam clean coal project which officially launched in 2014. The official cost of $1.5B put a crimp in a lot of regular upgrade projects let alone any consideration of nuclear.

The glowing numbers for SMRs are marketing pap. Independent studies have them no less than conventional nuclear at roughly $6k/kW. Of course conventional nuclear never hits budget, with projects like Vogtle coming in around $13k/kW.

In the interim, SaskPower has installed somewhere around 400MW (700MW total) of wind, and the new 353MW combined cycle Chinook generating station in Swift Current, which at $605M ($1,700/kW) was $75M under budget. You’ll never hear ‘under budget’ with regards to a nuclear project.