“It looks like a skillful murder”: how did Karen Silkwood’s attempts to stop nuclear violations in the USA end

Karen Silkwood was born February 19, 1946 in Longview, Texas. In childhood, nothing betrayed her as a future whistle-blower of nuclear magnates: Karen was an ordinary child, studied well, played the flute and was a member of the school volleyball team. She really liked chemistry and after graduating from high school she entered Lamar College (now a university) in Beaumont to get a degree in medical technology.

But after the first year, the girl abandoned her academic plans. She fell in love with oil worker Bill Meadows, got married and gave birth to three children. However, the family idyll did not last long. Due to financial problems, the Meadows had to declare bankruptcy. The last straw that overflowed Karen’s patience was her husband’s betrayal. She divorced him and decided to start life from scratch.

Nuclear production

In 1972, Karen Silkwood moved to Oklahoma. There she got a job at the Simarron nuclear fuel plant owned by Kerr-McGee Corporation.

“The enterprise, like other nuclear facilities in the United States, was private. The state owns research centers in the United States, and everything related to industry is in private hands and is used for commercial purposes, ”said Yury Rogulev, director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt US Studies Foundation, in an interview with RT.

• Uranium Processing Plant near Simarron, Oklahoma, 2014
• Gettyimages.ru
• © Smith Collection / Gado

Silkwood joined the union of workers in the oil, chemical and nuclear industries and soon became a member of the committee of the trade union organization. Her responsibilities included health and safety issues.

Soon Silkwood discovered numerous violations at the enterprise, both technological and organizational in nature: deviations from sanitary standards, malfunctioning of equipment protecting the respiratory system of workers, lack of showers and, most importantly, improper storage conditions for radioactive materials. During inspections of Silkwood, radiation dust was detected even in the canteen of the enterprise. In addition, radioactive samples, as Karen learned, could be safely taken out of the factory.

In 1974, Karen Silkwood testified about her violations of the US Atomic Energy Commission. The story began to gain wide publicity.

Irradiation and death

On November 5, 1974, during a standard independent dosimetric control, Silkwood revealed that the plutonium content in her body exceeds the maximum allowable 400 times. She was sanitized at the facility and sent home with a kit for collecting urine and feces for further analysis.

The next morning, plutonium was again discovered at Silkwood, although that morning she did only paper work. She went through a more intensive cleaning procedure. The same story repeated on November 7th. Doctors took her home, while in her apartment, especially in the bathroom and in the refrigerator, traces of plutonium were also found.

After that, the house was sanitized, and Karen herself, along with her boyfriend and neighbor, was sent for examination to the national laboratory in Los Alamos. However, experts there concluded that the level of exposure was not critical.

Returning home, Silkwood began to collect materials about violations at the plant for transmission to reporters of The New York Times. According to relatives, at this time, the girl began to receive threatening calls.

On November 13, 1974, Karen attended a union meeting at Hub Cafe, and then drove by car to Oklahoma City to meet with a journalist and a representative of the union’s national office. According to the participants in the meeting, on that day there was a folder with documents testifying to her violations. After the meeting, none of Karen's acquaintances alive saw her again.

On the evening of November 13, the girl’s body was found in the cabin of a broken Honda car near Oklahoma State Route 14. As reported, Karen's car flew off the road and crashed into a concrete pipe. According to experts, sedatives and alcohol were found in Silkwood's blood. The authorities decided that the girl most likely fell asleep at the wheel, and declared the incident an accident.

However, the folders with documents that her union colleagues saw were not found in Karen’s car. In addition, private detectives when inspecting the car on the rear bumper showed signs of damage.

• Karen Silkwood car after accident
• Gettyimages.ru
• © Bettmann

Given that the car was new, and Silkwood never applied for insurance, loved ones suggested that the damage occurred immediately before the death of Karen. In addition, the coroners who performed the autopsy found traces of radioactive substances in the girl’s lungs, stomach and other internal organs. But this did not force the experts to change their conclusions regarding the “non-criminal” nature of the girl’s death.

National fame

After the death of Karen Silkwood, various government agencies began inspections at the Cimarron plant. Violations were discovered in the field of industrial safety, as well as a shortage of a certain amount of radioactive materials, which, according to journalists, could be transferred to enterprises located in the territory of the Middle East allies of the United States. In 1975, the company was closed.

Karen’s relatives filed a lawsuit against Kerr-McGee Corporation in connection with the facts of its exposure. Representatives of the corporation refused to admit their guilt, but the court of first instance decided that the owners of the company were required to pay $ 10.5 million in fines and compensation in the Silkwood case. The appellate court, considering the guilt of the plant management insignificant, reduced this amount to $ 5 thousand. However, the Silkwood family initiated a retrial. As a result, representatives of Kerr-McGee Corporation, as part of a settlement agreement, agreed to pay the plaintiffs $ 1.38 million.

The story of Karen Silkwood has attracted the attention of journalists, writers and filmmakers. Several books were devoted to her tragic death, as well as the film "Silkwood", which was released in 1983. He was nominated for an Oscar and received one of the Golden Globe Awards.

However, neither the book, nor the article, nor the film gave an answer to the question of how, after all, Karen died. The story of her death is still one of the mysteries in recent US history.

“Karen Silkwood revealed a far from unique situation of neglect of industrial safety requirements by American business. Debugging such enterprises in such a way that they are completely safe requires huge investments. And in the conditions when this is ordinary business, security measures in the States could simply be neglected, which, from time to time, led to tragic consequences, ”Academician of the Academy of Political Sciences of the Russian Federation, head of the department of REU named after RT told in an interview with RT. G.V. Plekhanova Andrey Koshkin.

• © kinopoisk.ru

According to him, American businessmen and politicians “love to teach other countries how to protect human rights, protect nature and observe industrial safety measures, but when it comes to themselves, they are guided mainly by considerations of profit”.

“The national fame that Karen Silkwood gained after her tragic death forced American businessmen to take a more responsible approach to nuclear safety issues. It turns out that the girl gave her life for the lives and health of other people. As for her death, it looks like a skillful assassination, a well-prepared action aimed at eliminating a dangerous witness and intimidating other trade union activists. Judging by how the traces were swept up, we can talk about the involvement of high-ranking representatives of business and government in her death. But we, unfortunately, are unlikely to know the details, ”concluded Andrey Koshkin.