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Silkwood Movie

            
             Karen Silkwood was a Union Activist, one day she found herself on her way to deliver evidence of falsified health and safety records to a New York Times reporter and union representative when suddenly she was allegedly driven off the road and killed. The important information she carried with her on November 13, 1974 where never found. Thus she is remembered as a union martyr and a whistle blower for health issues and concerns.
             Silkwood worked at the Kerr McGee Company's Cimarron plutonium plant in Crescent, Oklahoma and an active member of Local 5-283 of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union. As union activist, Silkwood was startled by the serious health risks in a nuclear fuels production plant. She takes matters into her own hands and investigates the dangers and she soon uncovers a frightening cover-up by the company. To make matters worse she finds out that her house is inexplicably contaminated with radioactive plutonium. .
             Silkwood was a victim of company harassment, like other union activists in the plant, but her problems were beyond that because Kerr McGee, a virulently anti-union corporation with powerful political connections kept Silkwood under surveillance. It is suggested that possible help of police and government agents caused someone to tap her phone and contaminated her apartment. That fact that someone might have wanted her dead is not easily ignored because three months prior to her death she had given the Atomic Energy Commission a detailed list of safety violations at the plutonium plant where she worked. The documents she carried would have proven her allegation that quality control of fuel rods had been compromised. Her revelations might have exposed a major chaos with enormous and wide-ranging ramifications.
             Karen Silkwoods" story and life was portrayed in the film Silkwood directed by Mike Nichols in 1983, Meryl Streep played the role of Karen. This movie revived or reenacted the events of the 70s in the 80s because these issues regarding radioactive plutonium where not put to rest yet.


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