Karen gay silkwood

Karen Silkwood was a lab technician at a plutonium plant who exposed safety violations and was killed in a mysterious car accident. Nov Son: Michael b. Of course, it would be illegal, unwise, and extremely difficult to smuggle plutonium out of the plant, so Silkwood said she believed she had been intentionally contaminated as retribution for her testimony and union activism.

On 13 NovemberSilkwood attended a union meeting, carrying a thick folder full of documents she had compiled, which, she said, could incriminate Kerr-McGee on health and safety violations. She claimed that numerous leaks and spills had occurred at the plant, and that enough weapons-grade plutonium was missing from the facility to construct several nuclear bombs.

Karen Silkwood NNDB: She was the middle child of Merle and William Silkwood, with two sisters named Linda and Rosemary

Create a map starting with. Her body was found inside her battered Honda, crumpled at the side of the highway. Karen Gay Silkwood (February 19, – November 13, ) was an American laboratory technician and labor union activist known for reporting concerns about corporate practices related to health and safety in a nuclear facility.

In Silkwoodthe film dramatizing the last months of Karen Silkwood's life, the doomed whistleblower was played by Meryl Streep. Over subsequent days her body triggered the radiation alarm twice more, at higher levels, and an investigation revealed that her residence had been contaminated with high-level radioactivity.

This is a beta version of NNDB. Kerr-McGee officials maintained that she must have contaminated her home herself, to discredit the firm. Weeks after offering her testimony, Silkwood was shocked when her body triggered a radiation alarm, indicating plutonium contamination, as she tried to leave the facility after working a shift.

Karen Gay Silkwood Birth Longview, Gregg County, Texas, USA Death (aged 28) Crescent, Logan County, Oklahoma, USA. Curiously, officials from both Kerr-McGee and the Atomic Energy Commission arrived within hours and searched the wreckage of her vehicle, but her folder full of documents was never found, according to investigators.

Strange Death Scenes Karen : Karen Silkwood was an American laboratory technician and activist who attempted to expose the safety violations and negligence at Kerr-McGee’s Cimarron River nuclear facility

The state medical examiner ruled Silkwood's death a "one-car sleeping-driver accident", and the Quaaludes she had been prescribed to deal with depression were deemed a contributing factor, but dents on the back of the vehicle have led some observers to theorize that foul play was involved.

Learn about her life, work, activism, and legacy from this comprehensive biography. In the summer of she turned whistleblower, collecting evidence of the company's manipulation of safety and quality data and testifying at Atomic Energy Commission hearings.

She said that later that night she would deliver these documents to a New York Times reporter in Oklahoma City, a thirty mile drive from the town of Crescent, but she never arrived there.