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Salt Heater Test (FY19)

Mills, Melissa M.; Kuhlman, Kristopher L.; Matteo, Edward N.; Herrick, Courtney G.; Nemer, Martin N.; Heath, Jason; Xiong, Yongliang X.; Paul, Matthew J.; Stauffer, Philip; Boukhalfa, Hakim; Guiltinan, Eric; Rahn, Thom; Weaver, Doug; Dozier, Brian; Otto, Shawn; Rutqvist, Jonny; Wu, Yuxin; Ajo-Franklin, Jonathan; Hu, Mengsu

This report discusses the fiscal year 2019 (FY19) design, implementation, and preliminary data interpretation plan for a set of borehole heater tests call the brine availability tests in salt (BATS), which is funded by the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The organization of BATS is outlined in Project Plan: Salt In-Situ Heater Test. An early design of the field test is laid out in Kuhlman et al., including extensive references to previous field tests, which illustrates aspects of the present test. The previous test plan by Stauffer et al., places BATS in the context of a multi-year testing strategy, which involves tests of multiple scales and processes, possibly culminating in a drift-scale disposal demonstration.