By rosebell
Following an underground ventilation fan imploded, underground work on the Snowy 2.0 project, the expansion of Australia’s Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme, has been stopped.
The metal blades of the ventilation fan broke the fan casing and travelled 30 to 40m across the construction site, without harming any worker in the tunnel.
The underground work was completely halted for the inspection of all fans, after the incident.
As the entity responsible for the Snowy 2.0 project development is Snowy Hydro, it is seeking an immediate independent safety review and audit, while this organisation is calling for a change in leadership of the project from the current primary contractor Future Generation Joint Venture (FGJV).
In order to ensuring the safety and restart of the tunnel work, FGJV is due to cooperate with SafeWork NSW, a government agency responsible for regulating workplace health and safety.
According to Snowy Hydro’s statement: “Nothing is more important to Snowy Hydro than safety. Recent safety concerns at Snowy 2.0 have made it clear that as the client, our assurance role over FGJV’s activities requires this intervention. We’re committed to working with our workforce and unions to ensure that the safety standards we expect are in place at Snowy 2.0.”
Being designed to provide an additional 2,200MW of on-demand energy and around 350,000MWh of storage capacity, Snowy 2.0 is a large-scale renewable energy project.
Through a 27km tunnel and a new underground power station, this project involves linking the existing Tantangara dams and Talbingo dams.
The expected advantage from Snowy 2.0 is generating almost 4,000 direct jobs in the Snowy Mountains region throughout the life of the project, and thousands more in supply chain and services roles.
Australian Workers’ Union NSW branch secretary Tony Callinan said: “Workers had lost all confidence in the management of the project, which had faced multiple delays since work began in late 2019. We’ve had a number of serious incidents here now where we’ve been lucky, sooner or later, we’re going to be unlucky, and we’ll be dealing with major injuries or worse.”
