Workers at Yallourn power station, which supplies nearly a quarter of Victoria’s electricity, claim its owner Energy Australia has a “culture of dollars before lives” as details emerge about a potentially fatal on-site explosion in March.
The revelation of the March explosion comes as power station workers and Energy Australia await a decision from Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions, Kerri Judd, QC, on whether there will be any criminal charges over the 2018 workplace death of Yallourn unit controller Graeme Edwards.
Documents from Victoria’s workplace safety regulator, WorkSafe, describe a “catastrophic” explosion in one of Yallourn’s pulverised fuel mills on March 20.
Photographs of the March 20 explosion show the casing around the pulverising mill’s shaft blown apart, sparking a fire and flinging metal debris as far as 20 metres away.