Abstract
The results from the Individual Plant Examination of External Event of Yonggwyang nuclear power plants, unit 3 & 4, in Korea have shown that the high degree of diversities of the experts' opinions on seismicity and attenuation models is su, pp.sed to be generic cause of uncertainty of APEs(annual exceedance probability) in the PAHA(probabilistic seismic hazard analysis). This study investigated the sensitivity of the focal depth, which is one of the most uncertain seismicity parameters in Korea, Significant differences in resultant values of annual exceedance probabilities and much more symmetrical shape of the resultant PDFs(probability density functions), in case of consideration of focal depth, are found. These two results suggest that, even for the same seismic input data set including the seismicity models and ground motion attenuation models, to consider focal depth additionally for probabilistic seismic hazard analysis evaluation makes significant influence on the distributions of uncertainties and probabilities of exceedance per year for the whole ranges of seismic hazard levels. These facts suggest that it is necessary to derive focal depth parameter more effectively from the historical and instrumental documents on earthquake phenomena in Koran Peninsula for the future study of PSHA.