Inside the engineering megaproject that went horribly wrong | Four Corners

snowy 2.0 was sold as nation building for a low carbon future it's a revolution it's exciting from a technical and Engineering point of view but it's absolutely critical to save the planet from being fried a mega project that could power up to 3 million homes for an entire week we are building something which is an incredibly valuable asset to the energy transition but this pumped Hydro scheme has been afflicted by long delays and massive cost blowouts I knew it was just going to be an absolute dog of a project that making outlandish claims about when the sche was going to be finished and they still are so this is where you've had a lot of the trouble is it well further down is where we had the sinkle mistakes happen and that was an expensive one they got the cost wrong the ground conditions the time the schedule and I think the way they leveled with the public they've got that wrong too deep in the snowy mountains a giant tunnel boring machine is stuck the perfect illustration of how this socalled nation building project has gone so horribly wrong on this episode of Four Corners we go beyond the corporate spin to reveal the inside story of snowy 2.0 and how repeated warnings of problems that lay ahead were [Music] ignored snowy 2.0 is being built in rugged country deep in the Kiosco National [Music] Park the site can only be accessed via Steep and winding roads with permission from Snowy [Music] Hydro hi there hey good day how you doing good welcome to one of the world's biggest batteries Dennis Barnes became snowy hyro chief executive in February inheriting a project plagued by problems how do you feel looking down on this I feel incredibly proud of the team who are delivering this great project it was the new CEO's job to announce snowy 2.0 is way behind and well over budget it will will now cost $12 billion six times the initial estimate for this snowy has copped sustained criticism so today Dennis Barnes is walking us through what has been built ecvt emergency CA in ventilation and it goes for about 2.9 km this is the tunnel which equipment and people and uh services will come in and out of so this one will never have water in it but imagine more than 20 km of tunnels this size full of water so lots of people have said really harsh things about snowy 2.0 that'll never be completed what do you say to them well I say I'm here to complete the project we're 40% of the way in uh we've learned a lot we've now got a a contract reset a way of working reset which I believe will deliver and above all else it's a incredibly important to the uh energy transition and in in addition it's a good investment it will be a good investment infu we're about to go on board a massive tunnel boring machine called Florence it's at the very heart of snowy's problems all right team so we're here at the addit for TBM Florence um and in a moment we'll head down into the actual tunnel and um we'll be able to get up on Florence today we're not operating today Florence has barely moved in 19 months at the entrance to the tunnel where the machine is stuck sits a small statue of St Barbara the patron saint of tunneling she's charged with protecting workers and watching over projects snowy will be hoping for her good good grace we encountered soft ground before we were expecting to that soft ground stopped Florence suppos to step hazards and created a world of pain for Dennis Barnes back in may he faced Senate estimates thank you for for appearing again today so Florence is now acknowledged to be bogged when will it be un bogged I expect in weeks not months as soon as the slurry plant is operating we'll push forward I was wrong there's you know mistakes that we all make and I was wrong to you know perhaps somewhat naive and optimistic uh and you know I'm learning as I go as you would expect we're actually on Tunnel Boring Machine Florence uh 150 M into the tunnel and we're heading towards the front of the tunnel Boring Machine what are these steel rims here so they're stabilizing the cement segments because we know at this point the ground is a little bit wet and can be a little bit unstable but these are essentially to keep the water back and to uh help monitor the movement further down is where we had the sinkhole we're about 30 m underground just above us is a sinkhole that's caused so much grief for this [Music] project we send up the Drone to have a look the sinkhole is a scar on the landscape spilling out of snowy's construction area and deeper into the Kiosco National Park [Music] it represents a complete failure on behalf of the contractors to construct a tunnel without damaging the environment around them it's a complete failure of their systems and processes the dream for what would become snowy 2.0 unfolded at a Kuma Pub in early 2017 an energy crisis had hit parts of the country and the federal government was in urgent need of a [Music] solution at the Alpine Hotel a place steeped in snowy Hydro History Two Executives sketched out a plan so it was just a normal weekday evening we had a couple of snowy Hydro execs in having a beer in the corner and the plan for snowy 2.0 was just drawn out on the coaster at the corner table over a beer there was not a new idea they dusted off a blueprint from the 1960s to extend the original snowy Hydro scheme and create what would effectively be a giant battery to store renewable energy Pub regular and snowy Hydro Enthusiast Peter wolf sketches out what happened the engineer wanted to explain his his idea based on the early scheme and how to take advantage of a ping up a mass of water uphill storing it and dropping it down when they needed Peak power in Sydney it was just the type of plan then prime minister Malcolm turble was looking for well what happened was I I uh going back to 2016 there was a big blackout in t in South Australia uh and that really got me thinking about our Energy System I did a lot of reading and research over that summer of 201617 and it became very obvious to me that we needed to prioritize long duration energy storage which meant pumped Hydro [Music] well it's the devilishly difficult juggling act that's dominated political debate this year how to reduce carbon emissions guarantee energy security and put a break on Rising power prices this morning the Prime Minister will announce another possible fix Malcolm turble christened it snowy 2.0 a pumped Hydro scheme with a vast network of tunnels and a power station 800 M under under ground that would provide deep storage for renewable [Music] energy it's going to be the you know the the supercharging of this snowy Hydro scheme and and in some ways fully realizing the vision of the founders come around this [Music] way okay [Music] sure good how's the tour prime minister oh fantastic pretty spectacular really spectacular hello Hi Sam how are you I just shook my head and I thought this is going to be the most expensive photo opportunity in Australia's history snowy Hydro what an extraordinary achievement these are Big Dreams in these mountains real courage a belief in the future I am a nation building prime minister believe me and this is a nation building [Music] project see you soon thank you thanks a lot nation building the two most uh economically damaging words in uh the English language it's it's Dreadful yeah well I mean just neglecting infrastructure is pretty destructive too so there's always plenty of knockers that have got a reason there there's no critically important piece of infrastructure that somebody has not tried to stop being built and if all of the knockers had won where would we be the plan was for a hydroelectric scheme using two existing reservoirs from the lower talbingo Reservoir water would be pumped uphill using Surplus solar and wind power to tantangara and then when electricity demand was at its highest typically in the early evening that water could be released using gravity it would flow downhill through turbines and produce electricity snowy 2.0 is an engineer dream uh it's a phenomenally large project there's 27 km of Raceway of of tunnels connecting the two dams together 40 km in total the uh the tunneling is uh phenomenally ambitious even the cavern there are two Caverns that have to be drilled drilled out or blasted out underground 800 meters below the surface each of these Caverns are about the same size as the Titanic this is a huge project didn't Stack Up simple as that it couldn't Stack Up you a schem with 27 km of tunnels can never Stack Up economically or technically simple as [Music] [Music] that good afternoon okay all right well look it's it's great to be here in the snow mountain a feasibility study was commissioned to determine if snowy 2.0 was technically and financially viable back then the CEO of snowy Hydro was Paul broad what Paul's doing is examining all of the geology all along the route of the tunneling that'll be undertaken to connect the tant tangra reservoir to the talbingo reservoir despite the many unknowns the political will was apparent how long will it take to build this Paul well best we'll get we'll get him get him on the sticky paper now yeah well I don't get I don't get I don't need the C before the horse you know feasibility study will tell us that but I mean you know six years type thing you know and um it depends very much on the geology and we'll firm that up in the next month or two well I think it was pretty telling wasn't it energy Market analyst Danny price once advised Malcolm turble on climate change the decision had clearly already been made on this project Paul Bro didn't know what to say he had to respond quickly said let let's not get ahead of ourselves you put Paul broad on the spot there though didn't you when you said to him how long will it take to build even before the feasibility study well he could have said I don't know he could have said I don't know as a Prime Minister asking the CEO of a company how long is it going to take to build gave the impression that it was already a done deal did it not I don't know it did not it did not the deal is done when it is done and that is when the decision to invest is made obviously I thought it was a great opportunity and I was hoping that it would all stack up but the work was being done we were spending millions of dollars on you know top engineers and economists and so forth to analyze [Music] it [Music] snowy 2.0 is an ambitious project in unknown terrain just like the original [Music] scheme the snowy mountains engineering Corp or smack emerged from the snowy Hydro scheme as a respected voice in the industry it would be hired to assess the feasibility of snow 2.0 these guys BR lots of experience you know and you're telling me all the experience of building hydr around the world so it's very very good give me makes me sleep better at night excellent well you're back where you started yeah we here SMI is an organization that has something to say about this that people should listen to I mean it's their it's their origin it's where they started from uh uh snow mountains Engineering Corporation so they they grew out of the snowy scheme they knew what they were talking about they should have been listened to we've learned some within smack were worried about the geology over the last 2 months we've spoken to more than a dozen people who've worked on Snowy 2.0 one revealed smck wanted more drilling to understand the complex geology it feared a tunnel Boring Machine might get stuck snowy Hydro rejected that advice I know from the talk in the industry and people I know respect that smack had some pretty strong views that the uh there wasn't enough information available on the the geological Integrity of of the tunnel path and that wasn't enough testing done um to uh to say anything solid about the costs and U if that's the case then that been proved exactly right um as evidenced by uh the tent machine that is stuck yes they should have done more drilling whether they could ever have done sufficient drilling I I doubt and I can understand that the engineers are saying we must have more geological information it's just Reckless to proceed without [Music] that Simon Bartlett is an energy industry veteran who helped plan queensland's wvho pumped Hydro scheme for an underground scheme the geology is absolutely critical so you must understand the maximum possible of the rock conditions you're going through so I'm told that smck was very worried about the geology and that they asked snowy to do more Drilling and that was denied as a project developer you think about how you're going to handle a risk do you you do more work to understand the risk or do you allow contingencies in your project to handle that if it occurs uh and I'm sure at the time there would have been a very balanced decision made to go no we're not going to do more Geotech we've got advice we understand the advice but we're going to take a different decision smck told Four Corners there will always be unknowns when undertaking complex tunneling projects and ultimately it was about weighing up the cost of more investigation work against the value of additional data in late 2017 smack concluded snowy 2.0 was feasible but would cost between 3.8 and $4.5 billion that was double the original $2 billion forecast now that was obviously a an estimate you could call it a guesstimate but it was very early how damaging was it that that figure it's only damaging because you keep harping on it because it there was no decision based on the $2 billion the feasibility study predicted first power would be generated in late 2024 was it underdone no well I mean no it was a very thorough piece of work and I think the economics of snow 2.0 even at the higher uh construction Cost U is very very sound as the you know government has said as snow snowy Hydro said Federal government's given the green light to the renewable energy snowy 2.0 project by this time Malcolm Turnbull had been removed as prime minister it was now Scott Morrison's photo opportunity yep and just walk straight across this is what Vision looks like it doesn't get more faired income than this this is faired income 100% this project stucks up I mean we we absolutely scrutinized it thoroughly and and and with a microscope the project chugged along and it certainly had a lot of uh political pressure and the bureaucracy was pushing as hard as it could to get the project [Music] going it would be Scott Morrison who gave the project its final [Music] approval okay thumbs up snow excellent how good's butter chicken snowy 2.0 was Now set to go it's pretty clear that snowy hadn't done the detailed geotechnical investigations to fully characterize the uh the very challenging uh and changeable geologic conditions along the Route [Music] the project hinged on three giant tunnel boring [Music] machines they would excavate the tunnels connecting the two reservoirs and the power station one of the tunnel boring machines was Florence [Music] we have commissioned and celebrated our third TBM Florence with lots of community members watching on you know in life you're Dare To Dream um you're dare to think about the worlds that might be and you think about the kids and the world that they're going to inherit the then CEO claimed to have hir the world's best tunnelers as part of a joint venture known as future generation or FG we scared the world to get the FG guys to come here and build this build this incredibly complex engineering challenge but trouble would lie ahead for Florence even before the first rock was cut there was another warning four corners has been told in the weeks before Florence was commissioned workers drilled ahead to explore the tunnel's planned route at about 100 m in they hit soft ground and water that gushed thousands of liters they knew um that it was going to be soft they were expecting water in that in that section and so they know what's ahead of them um they drill regularly ahead of the 2bm so they know uh there shouldn't really be any surprises it's pretty much consistent theme of the project they tried to get the tbms running cutting Rock Tunnel activities are the priority I always have been since day one unfortunately I've had the cart before the horse a lot of the time Dennis Barnes was not in charge when Florence was commissioned but is now responsible for its progress what I'm told is that a probe drill was put through before Florence was launched and that you knew that there was water you knew the ground was soft but you launched it anyway yeah we we know that in parts of all of our tunnels we will find soft ground and we will find Wet ground the extent of that softness and wetness you don't really know until you push forward so you did know the ground was soft oh yeah we knew that they was soft we just didn't know it was that soft so sorry you have said that it was unexpected soft ground now you're saying that it was softer than you thought yeah unexpected to that degree oh I think it's just a convenient excuse to be honest um they they would have known exactly what was ahead of them and if they didn't they should uh because if they're trying to to excavate ground that's unknown they're putting our members in their workers lives at risk to be honest they they've got to know what's ahead of them around 8 weeks after tunneling began Florence hit soft ground and was effectively stalled those working on the project have told Four Corners they pushed forward 50 cm then spend the next week clearing out all the mud and water from around the tunnel boring machine we've obtained pictures showing the machine flooded with [Music] water at the time snowy Hydro told the public nothing about these problems rumors were permeating that from the project that the tunnel boring machine was stuck snowy counted with a media release saying Florence was on the move just before Christmas it said a surface Depression had emerged but tunneling was continuing safely excavation the head race tunnel is been carried out by TBM Florence which is progressing steadily through poor ground conditions the tank I think it's pretty clear at this point that snowy has misled the public on a number of occasions they've given us reason to believe that things are on track when we later found out that they're not so I've come for a bit of a walk to come and see what's happening up here top of the snowy 2.0 scheme one of the worst kept secrets in the country is that Florence is having a lot of trouble energy investor and climate activist Simon Holmes ACC Court was not convinced by the corporate Spin and in the background you can see behind me a hole has opened up a sinkhole if you like uh caused by a cave-in where Florence has grabbed the material at the front of the machine spattered out the back and uh caused a sink hole above around the same time snowy finally acknowledged that Florence was not moving the TBM has been paused until about 10 to 15 M of weak material in front of it is stabilized it had only gone 150 M Rock what do you think of the language they said that Florence was paused well you know it's I mean if well it paused I mean like it it's just it's uh it's it's calculated to create the impression that uh it's not as serious a problem as it as it obviously was so I've always taken the view that you build trust with truth and transparency so you've got to tell the truth about what's going on but you've got to be transparent about it you can't expect people just to take your word for it it's a bit like the add-on TV right where the fourward drives bogged in this same parked it's not paused it's bulked it ain't going [Music] anywhere the TBM number three s221 has a total length of 142 M we've learned Florence's problems were made worse because it lacked vital equipment ground conditions are complex to push through soft ground it needed what's known as a slurry system to help Shore up The Path ahead slurry piping system for safe material transfer so was the actual slurry machine on site the slurry machine was not on site and not available to be run in slurry mode the experts we have on the project who have you know got experience of tunneling worldwide will have made a decision at the time to operate in a particular mode which obviously hasn't turned out to have been the best decision clearly it's an oversight if you're going to it's WR I andan if you're going to be dealing with soft ground that needs to be slurried um and you don't have the sling kit you've screwed up haven't you for Corners has obtained a copy of a construction method statement a guide for operating Florence it recommended a slurry system be in place for early tunneling subject to ground [Music] conditions why was that not done as can imagine on a project of this complexity there would be uh thousands of pages of instructions and guidelines on how to address what we're trying to achieve and of course as you learn more and as you you know develop the project that may change that was before my time so I'm not familiar with the decision on the day but as I understand it the the machine was able to move forward with the perceived level of softness that we had without slurry mode and obviously that's proven to be incorrect the contractor future generation said Drilling in advance of the tunnel Boring Machine confirmed its operation method was appropriate it said every measure was taken to ensure the tunnel was excavated with diligence care and in the safest possible working environment Florence didn't sink Florence was a little bit unstable very briefly how close did you go to losing that machine oh relatively close mean I'm not going to hide the fact that for a period there it could have got worse uh but absolutely we've done the work now we've stabilized the machine we stabilized the [Music] ground until now the price tag for Florence's troubles hasn't been revealed we've learned the cost of the project is $2 billion and this has been confirmed by snowy [Music] Hydro you can't live your life backwards and mistakes happen and that was an expensive one there's no question that a significant but nowhere near a major majority of this blowout and cost is due to mistakes that were made uh by the contractor or whoever was directing the contractor all righty here we go you ready sweaty all right I'm going to start okay one ready 1 2 3 good job the main construction contractor for snowy 2.0 also worked on the airport link tunnel in Perth which suffered a number of serious incidents I met with a snowy Hydro Executives long before the contract was awarded and and suggested they should have do some research into the project in Perth and have a look at their performance before they even considered them regardless of the price they put in they should have not been considered it on the safety safety experience alone the 26y old man was doing maintenance work 20 M Underground when he was hit in the head by a flailing compressed air hose that had disconnected from a pipe all his teeth were knocked out from what I was told nearly every bone in his face was broken and the most damaging was to his head so it resulted in uh brain damage so that resulted into a brain bleed Terry Butterworth says he only heard about his son's accident via a friend there's no communication from the company whatsoever while we're in New Zealand nothing I I strongly um yeah I strongly emphasize that there's no mention no call no anything from the company they said that they emphas Siz they tried to get hold of me my response was what I've just told you you know didn't try very [Applause] hard unions condemned the contractor over the safety incidents is to attack what do we do work safe wa issued three directions to stop work and 22 Improvement notices during the tunnel's 6-year construction period rules the contractor selini impro has since been rebranded as webuild Ren despite their problems in Perth webuild was hired for snowy 2.0 so I'm not going to comment on we build globally or we build in perf uh what I can say is that you know we see competent people with good machines and you know we've already drilled more than 6 kmers comp Ence is not getting Florence stuck is it well Florence uh as I said you know ENC counted some challenges we absolutely have learned some things uh both as snowy and as we build and uh I have confidence that when she restarts they'll they'll they'll move along at [Music] PACE the original snowy scheme is is a proud part of Australian's history we played a key part in in the original snowy scheme and we were all very excited about snowy [Music] 2.0 the awu now has more than 300 members at snowy 2.0 doing everything from digging tunnels to working in the kitchens our multiculturalism is all attributed back to the these mountains but this project weren't remembered with the same the same fondness for the workers here safety is one of the Union's biggest concerns there we've obtained this footage showing toxic gas filling the tunnel where Florence is stuck it was a start of night shift and workers were trying to reinforce the ground ahead my understanding is that the the gas was a result of a chemical reaction with some products they were putting into the um grout to try and stabilize the ground around Florence that ch reaction released released a gas uh our organizer contacted the Safety Management on the Saturday night and was told that it was it wasn't a hazardous substance turns out it was safe work New South Wales said the gas posed a serious imminent risk to Workers Health it added there were inadequate measures implemented to prevent exposure to a harmful substance the tunnel was evacuated very hazardous situation the work was stopped in that area for a week I think it's one of the only times where I've actually had a proper emergency that I'm where where the tunnel had to be evacuated so that's still obviously under investigation CU it's reasonably recent so we don't know what the causes of that leak would have been appropriate action taken stop work think about what is the risk Clos the plant down uh so very supportive that that action was taken you say it appropriate action was taken it took 10 days to shut the project down yeah again I'm not familiar with that one in the detail cuz the investigation is still ongoing we've asked the New South Wales 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 generation operations [Music] marks this is where snowy Hydro monitors its existing Network weather data and [Music] prices so it's really the nerve center of snowy Hydro snowy is one of the biggest generators in the market has some of the most flexible and dispatchable plant so we're often there when other generators are not there so we in some ways balance the market the electricity currently generated by snowy Hydro feeds in the grid via existing transmission lines but snowy 2.0 will need far more a vast new network would cut through Prime Farmland it's yet another problem for the the project I spent half my career as the Chief Operating Officer of pal in Queensland so I know a lot about transmission I know the anxiety it can cause people who are affected by this proposals to build this on their [Music] property strong community opposition to Giant new transmission lines could mean more delays for snowy [Applause] [Music] [Music] 2.0 the transmission network will slice through this family farm in the New South Wales Southern tab lands so we're impacted with 3.1 km of transmission line eight Towers they're 75 M High I'm just gutted it it's so destroying because we have put in so much work love and care to our land care those group of trees will be wiped out the 70 M easement will clear them oh this wind not good well we're replanting native plants stocks and trees that have been here originally and we're quite proud to be able to care for land so Nan bets fears the planned transmission lines for snowy 2.0 will undo the work she's put into regeneration it madees me feel anxious for the Next Generation I just feel ashamed progress without care of foresight they just have no foresight no and I know they're all anxious to get power but there are other ways we're not against Renewables and we have as landholders have said we have to look at other options because we're carrying the brunt of the extreme distances to connect snowy to to city populations if it's coming through please listen to us because we are part of this Solution please put it under ground as our best compromise nobody wants it nobody's asked for it but this is the best compromise the New South Wales government has ruled out putting the power lines underground claiming it's too [Music] expensive there's plenty riding on Snowy 2.0 and the promise to keep the lights on as Australia moves away from fossil [Music] fuels we need a huge amount of long duration storage no one in their right mind argues with that you know other than the people that want to keep burning coal of course um um snowy 2.0 is really the only opportunity to have a storage of that scale in Australia what's your response to Malcolm turble saying we need the Deep storage he just has it wrong um he's possibly been misled hasn't thought it through um you don't need deep storage um when you have other options so you need energy storage but there are much better ways for energy storage nowadays batteries they're making large scale batteries that can store electricity for 8 hours it's way cheaper but you think about it you can deliver batteries in about 2 to 3 years not 15 20 years you don't have any construction risks like what we're confronting here um much more environmentally none of this environmental damage the challenges ahead for snowy 2.0 are immense Florence is still not moving awaiting New South Wales government approval to fix the sinkhole and there is still many unknowns what are the ground conditions like ahead of Florence they're going to encounter these poor conditions again and again and again those places where it's Sim and worse I think there's a quite a high likelihood we're going to see the same thing happen again we're operating in you know quite a geologically diverse area uh probably the most diverse in Australia but that's why we've got some of the best contractors in the world a lot of the equipment is ready for that but that's the one thing that you would say is a risk to the project going forward snowy Hydro has I believe misled the public on many occasions with this project and it's a bit much to ask the public to uh to trust everything at face value um now that might be fair or might be unfair but what we really need to trust these deadlines and costs is an independent expert to come in uh and monitor the project on an ongoing basis to tell us that it's both on track and on budget and that the contract is being executed properly [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 2,131,672

Keywords: abc news, australian news, abc news indepth, documentaries, long-form journalism, snowyhydro, engineering, snowy2.0, megastructure, megaproject, hydro, project, Australia, renewables, energy, renewableenergy, environment

Id: GJhxRknHCvU

Length: 44min 58sec (2698 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2023