WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT

Underground laboratories for CO2 geological storage research
5-6 June 2019, Nancy, France
OBJECTIVES

The Mission Innovation Report1 of the Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage Experts’ Workshop held in Houston, Texas, in September 2017 mentions the usefulness of using Underground Research Laboratories (URL) for addressing the Priority Research Directions (PRDs) for CO2 storage required for accelerating breakthrough innovation in CCUS.

URL-Andra Underground Research Laboratory2 is an ECCSEL research facility. The Lab was constructed to study the development of the French reversible deep geological disposal for high level and/or long live radioactive waste (Cigéo project). Located in France, at Andra’s Meuse/Haute-Marne Centre3 close to Nancy city, this is a unique facility accessible for in situ experiments in a deep clay formation, the Callovo-Oxfordian. This formation has been well characterized: it lies between around 420 m to 600 m deep, its thickness is at least 130 m, the hydraulic pressure is around 5 MPa and the vertical stress of 12 MPa. Therefore, URL-Andra is allowing performing different tests from small scale to large scale, in representative conditions of a caprock of a CO2 storage site. Useful research for advancing CO2 storage can be performed there, e.g. on caprock and well integrity, and on fault behaviour; it is open to researchers worldwide, according to the schedule of experimental activities led by Andra, and to the safety and financial rules.
ECCSEL, the European Research Infrastructure on CO2 Capture and Storage, is organising this workshop to encourage researchers to use this unique research facility. Access to the site is facilitated by the Access Policy and procedures set up by the ECCSEL ERIC for its 56 research facilities distributed in 5 countries (Norway, France, Italy, The Netherlands, UK), that are available to the global research community.

For more information and registration link please see the attached Invitation.pdf file.