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Testimony to the Hawaii County Council in opposition to Bill No. 62 and }tesolution No. 71 1 have long stood for a Nuclear-Free be Independent Hawaii and Facific region. I am the co-author of a book, The Dark Side of Pax•adise (Hawaii in a nucleax• world! and I was sentenced to 3 years in federal prison for a 1984 swim for peace in Hilo Bay. T}rat swim was part of a non-violent effort to uphold the spirit, if indeed not the letter, of Hawaii County's Nuclear-Free law, against nuclear warships entering our waters. I want to bring to your attention several nuclear matters related to Hawaii which may be of interest. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission has determined ~t off- 65 sites around the world tested for plutonium radioactiv~p Y contamination from atmospheric nuclear weapon testing,--~~re sam~1=~ taken fx•om the windward side of the Big Island ranked ~iiiinbe~ UNS}. A copy of the AF.C study is attached to my testimony. C-.3-'herd appears to be a correlation between our high rainfall.,and ~llocit being brought down from the upper ,jet stream winds trgarelipg weft t.o east from nuclear weapon tests at Johnston Island ~YIp m'x~1-es south and the Marshall Islands further west. -r Some of you may ask, what is plutonium' It is one of the most. potent carcinogenic substances known. A piece, less than one-millionth of a gram, smaller than a grain of pollen, is capable of producing cancer if inhaled or ingested. Flutonium has a half-.life of 24,000 years, which means it is potentially toxic for at least. a half million years. In 1978, the Hawaii Constitutional Converition passed, and the voters ratified the following amendment to the State Constitution, Section 8, Article 12: "No nuclear fision power plant shall be constructed or radioactive material disposed of in the State without the prior approval by a two-thirds vote in each house of the legislature." In 198}, Hawaii County passed an historic Ord. No. 665. Hawaii County became the first municipality in the U.S. to pass a NO NUKES law, declaring itself a nuclear-free zone of peace. Today, more than 250 other municipalities in the U.S. have followed our example. The purpose of the law is: "to maintain a clean and healthy environment for present, and future generations in the County, to protect the health and safety of the residents of the County from rad.iat,ion exposure resulting from dangers of accidents involv9ng the transportation or storage of nuclear materials ur the development, of nuclear reactors, and to protect the general health, safety, comfort and welfare of the citizens of the County. Specifically, the law prohibits the transportation and storage of radioactive materials, and the locating or building of a nuclear energy facility which utilizes nuclear material within the County. It appears that in 1981, then Council Chair Yamashi.ro tried to write a major loophole into the law to exempt virtually all commercial nuclear faciltites, the equivalent of exempting smokers from no smoking laws, but he may have failed ta._ Comm. Na.