Explosives equipment has gone missing at one of Snowy Hydro’s giant work sites, prompting searches of staff bags and an investigation by WorkSafe New South Wales.
Guardian Australia understands a detonator and booster were unaccounted for on Tuesday at the end of the Monday night shift. A rock blasting crew of six including staff from Snowy Hydro and Orica, an explosives company, initially reported the missing equipment at the Lobs Hole site of the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project.
Workers had their bags searched on Tuesday and Wednesday, with one person saying staff “were going off their nuts”, adding to dismal morale at the much-delayed megaproject. Searches had ended by Thursday.
Staff were told the detonator and accelerant were not hazardous because they required dedicated equipment, including a one-off computer program, to activate.
While staff felt inconvenienced by the search, one staff member said “it was a serious matter. Everyone’s pretty concerned about it”. WorkSafe were examining the issue and NSW police were also notified.
A spokesperson for Snowy Hydro confirmed that a detonator and booster “could not be accounted for by the Snowy 2.0 principal contractor Future Generation Joint Venture’s specialist blasting subcontractor at the area of a scheduled blast inside the Lobs Hole main access tunnel”.
“These items are inert and are not able to be activated without a number of other key components including an electronic controller, blast code and firing key that is operated under strict technical supervision,” she said.
“Following extensive recounts and stocktake checks the missing components could not be located, and as part of normal protocols, NSW police and SafeWork were advised,” the spokesperson said. “Following police inspection, documentation review and risk assessment of scenarios, it has since been determined that the items have likely been mistakenly double-packed into a blasting drill hole and no illegal activity has occurred.”
WorkSafe NSW, Orica and the NSW and federal government were also contacted for comment. Police NSW diverted requests for information to WorkSafe NSW.
Ted Woodley, a spokesperson for the National Parks Association of NSW, said the lack of certainty about the missing materials added to the “obfuscation and the secrecy of the whole project”.
“There’s just no transparency whatsoever with this whole project,” said Woodley, a former senior energy executive. “You’ve got to expect these things with a couple of thousand people living on site.”
Snowy’s 2.0 project was originally launched as a $2bn “nation-building” venture by then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2017.
The project aims to deliver 2 gigawatts of generation capacity by linking two reservoirs – Talbingo and Tantangara – through 27km of tunnels. Water would be pumped up to the higher reservoir when the grid has low-cost electricity and released to flow to the lower one when prices are high.
Delays and cost blowouts have set back the first supply of electricity to at least the end of 2029, Snowy’s new chief executive, Dennis Barnes, said last month. Work on the main headrace 17km tunnel from Tantangara to an underground power station has been stalled since last December after the boring machine got stuck in soft rock within about 70m of the start of work.
Lobs Hole, though, is at the other end of the project, where work has been proceeding more smoothly.
“We are close to completing stage one excavation,” one internal document from last month reads, noting there were still “a number of drill and blast sites” being worked on in the area.
