Today in 1974, Karen Silkwood’s car was apparently forced off a quiet highway in western Oklahoma, where it crashed into a culvert, instantly killing her. Silkwood was employed as a technician at Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation’s plutonium fuel rod fabrication plant in Cimarron. 
Silkwood was on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter and an Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers union official to discuss safety concerns and blow the whistle on Kerr-McGee by sharing falsified quality control records for fuel rods manufactured at the Cimarron facility.
From 1970-75, workers at Cimarron mixed two metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium with uranium and placed it in 19,000 stainless steel fuel rods for the Fast Flux Test Facility reactor at the Hanford Reservation. In 1974, the AEC discovered about 40 pounds of Pu-239 was missing.
A few days before she died, someone from Kerr-McGee deliberately contaminated Silkwood’s apartment with plutonium—a material she did not work with at the Cimarron facility. She and her roommates were also under continuous company surveillance.
In 2014, Kerr-McGee agreed to pay $5.15 billion to settle a lawsuit about its failure to obey environmental laws at two dozen heavily-contaminated sites across the United States—the largest fine ever levied by the US government to enforce such laws. justice.gov/opa/pr/united-…
In 1984, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that Silkwood’s estate was entitled to $10 million in punitive damages from Kerr-McGee which was awarded in a jury trial in 1979. In 1986, after the Supreme Court refused to intervene a second time, Kerr-McGee settled for $1.38 million.
Silkwood’s story is told in the 1983 film “Silkwood,” adapted from Howard Kohn’s 1981 book. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, incl. best actress (Meryl Streep), best supporting actress (Cher), best screenplay (Norah Ephron & Alice Arlen), and best director (Mike Nichols).
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
