The authors are studying aboveground oil shale retorting and have developed the LLNL Hot-Recycled-Solid (HRS) process as a generic, second-generation, rapid pyrolysis retorting system in which recycled shale is the solid heat carrier. In 1984-87, they operated a 1 ton-per-day HRS pilot plant to study retorting chemistry in an actual recirculation loop, Cena (1986). In 1989 they upgraded their laboratory pilot plant to process 4 ton-per-day of commercially sized shale, which will allow them, for the first time, to study pyrolysis and combustion chemistry using the full particle size, to produce enough oil for detailed characterization studies, to study environmental consequences, and to begin answering the many bulk solid handling questions concerning scale-up of the HRS process. In this paper the authors report on the status of their pilot plant operations. They have operated the facility circulating raw shale at ambient temperature and dolomite at elevated temperature. They plan the first hot shale run in November 1990. 5 refs., 16 figs., 4 tabs.