Character and distribution of borehole breakouts and their relationship to in situ stresses in Deep Columbia River Basalts

Abstract

The character and distribution of borehole breakouts in deeply buried basalts at the Hanford Site in south central Washington State are examined in light of stress indicator data and hydraulic‐fracturing stress data by means of acoustic televiewer and acoustic waveform logging systems. A series of boreholes penetrating the Grande Ronde Basalt of the Columbia River Basalt Group were logged to examine the extent of breakouts at depths near 1000 m. Breakouts occur discontinuously throughout the interiors of most flows. In some boreholes the distribution of borehole wall breakouts closely correlates with the incidence of core disking. Differences in the distribution of breakouts and disking are attributed to differences in failure mechanisms. A thin interval of breakout‐free basalt occurs near the upper and lower limits of flow interiors, with many intervals of breakouts terminating at the intersection of oblique fractures with the borehole. Hydraulic‐fracturing stress measurement results obtained from four deep boreholes indicate anisotropic horizontal principal stresses, with maximum principal stress along an approximate north trending axis, consistent with the east trending orientation of breakouts. Acoustic waveform logs indicate that there is no measurable difference between the seismic properties of breakout‐free flow tops and flow interiors. The highly coherent waveforms obtained in almost all flow interiors indicate that damage to the borehole wall associated with breakout formation remains confined to the thin annulus of stress concentration.