Silkwood

Plots: A worker at a plutonium processing plant is purposefully contaminated, psychologically tortured and possibly murdered to prevent her from exposing worker safety violations at the plant. Fairly accurate recounting of the story of Karen Silkwood, the Oklahoma nuclear fuel plant worker who blew the whistle on dangerous practices at the Kerr-McGee plant and who died under circumstances which are still under debate. Karen Silkwood lives a free-spirited existence with two friends, Drew Stephens and Dolly Pelliker, who work with her at an Oklahoma nuclear facility. It’s only when she discovers she has been exposed to radiation that Karen’s conscience awakens, and soon she is digging for evidence of wrongdoing. But her sudden zeal for safer working conditions may come at a high price as she alienates friends…and possibly even puts her own life in peril. “There’s a moral imperative here.” Silkwood (1983) by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen is an historical drama about a 28-year-old plutonium processing worker, “Karen Silkwood” (Meryl Streep), who aligns with the Union to secretly gather evidence of Kerr-McGee plant’s safety violations. The hope is to gain leverage for upcoming contract negotiations, which Karen thinks is a good thing for her co-workers, but many of them fear for their jobs as well as for Karen’s own safety, more than they fear being proverbial “canaries in the coal mine.” The threat of cancer from plutonium exposure seems less important than losing their income. Nonetheless, Karen pushes ahead, despite being warned that what she’s doing is dangerous. The danger becomes real when Karen realizes she’s been intentionally contaminated-and then accused of contaminating herself–which is ridiculous considering the torturous shower and scrub she must endure every time she sets off the radiation alarm. Things come to a head when her entire home is stripped of its contents-due to plutonium contamination-and she gets tested to confirm her “internal” contamination. No doubt, this would have been a good place for Karen’s activism to stop, but Karen attends yet another union meeting-after which an attendee recalls seeing her leave with documents. While on the way to meet with a New York Times journalist and union official, Karen is killed in a front-end crash into a ditch. The car appeared to be run-off the road, but, because sedatives were found in her system, it was deemed an accident. The epilogue of the film states that no documents were ever found in Karen’s car, but that the Oklahoma plant closed down a year later, leaving the audience with the mistaken impression that Kerr-McGee went out of business, which did not happen. A significant detail, which the film doesn’t cover, is the fact that the rear of Karen’s vehicle had unexplained damage, suggesting that it was pushed.