Complexity and false hope is eating the crown of Australia’s Net Zero transition — the Snowy 2.0 Pumped Hydro scheme. Things have gone from “debacle” to Soviet Grade Industrial Fiasco. After Florence-the-tunnel-borer got stuck and created a sinkhole, workers spent seven months trying to shore up the ground, playing God against the mountain — pumping in grout, cement, and polyurethane foam. But the foam made a gas so toxic the tunnel had to be evacuated. To make things worse, the workers were originally told the gas was water vapor, but it turned out to be isocyanate. At every point, the Snowy Hydro team hid the bad news and issued propaganda, and it’s only taken the ABC a year to tell us the workers predicted the sinkhole and three months to investigate the safety breach.

Still, that’s better than the NSW regulator who knows all the other safety breaches but won’t even share them because it’s so bad ” it may affect the contractor’s reputation.” (Which it surely just did anyway.)

This is your low-carbon future. It was supposed to cost $2 billion, but the bill is $12 billion. It was supposed to be finished, but it’s barely begun. Florence, the tunnel borer, was meant to have dug a 15km long hole through the mountain, but it’s only bored through 150 meters. It did about a week’s worth of progress before being stuck for 19 months.

They knew at the start things were doomed, but did it anyway. Workers drilled ahead and hit soft ground only 100m from the opening. Water gushed out, proving there would be mass mud within. But they filled the hole and went ahead anyway. They were supposed to have a slurry system in place to cope with the mud, but it wasn’t there. In just 8 weeks, the borer was predictably bogged — wallowing in up to 4 feet of water. Drowning, perhaps in fantasies of building a sacred weather talisman.

Do normal industrial projects, given normal scrutiny, go so wrong for so long?

A sinkhole, toxic gas and the $2 billion mistake behind Snowy 2.0’s blowout

ABC  Four Corners, By Angus Grigg, Lesley Robinson, Kamin Gock

Workers had warned a sinkhole was likely. They had been telling the contractor the ground was too soft to continue the strategy of inching forward in the hope of hitting harder ground.

“Florence was pulling out triple the amount of soil it should have been,” one worker says. “We warned them it was going to cause a sinkhole, but they did not listen”.

Energy investor Simon Holmes à Court says Snowy has “misled the public on a number of occasions”.

“They got the cost wrong, the ground conditions, the time, the schedule, and I think the way they levelled with the public, they’ve got that wrong too.”

“They’ve given us reason to believe that things are on track. When we later found out that they’re not.”

Who does the NSW state government serve?

Four Corners asked the NSW regulator how many safety breaches there have been at Snowy 2.0.

It refused to provide the numbers, saying it may affect the contractor’s reputation.

Isn’t that the point?

Florence cost $150 million, but Bogged-Florence has cost the nation $2 billion (or more). For the last 19 months, count them, nineteen, the borer has barely moved.

Someone should make a children’s book out of this so even preschoolers learn how stupid money can be magnified to do damage far beyond the initial expense.

In the end, all this work and money is for one week of electricity, and no one said, “wait a minute”?

Snowy 2.0 was sold as being key to a low-carbon future — capable of powering 3 million homes for an entire week.

All this, for the same price as three coal plants that could power homes for 50 years…

Project management so bad it’s unprecedented —  “the worst so far”

If Snowy 2.0 had been a coal mine endangering workers, would the ABC have waited months to look into it?

“It’s one of the only times where I’ve actually had a proper emergency, where the tunnel had to be evacuated,” [Tony Callinan, NSW branch secretary for the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU).]

“I’ve seen many major projects and unfortunately, this job’s one of the worst … sorry, it is the worst by far.”

Is this the start of the ABC throwing the Snow 2.0 scheme under the bus?

Four Corners’ full investigation Tunnel Vision from 8:30 on ABC TV and ABC iview.

The only thing it has produced for the environment is a sinkhole.

You’d never know Australia was a top mining nation, eh?

This blog Feb 2023: Australia’s Biggest Renewable Energy Project, Snowy 2.0, grinds to a halt, with a stuck bore

This article originally appeared at JoNova