Karen Silkwood

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Karen Gay Silkwood (February 19, 1946 – November 13, 1974) was an American laboratory technician and labor union activist known for reporting concerns about corporate practices related to health and safety at Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site, a nuclear facility, in Crescent, Oklahoma. She worked at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site making plutonium pellets. She was the first woman ever elected to the company union's negotiating team. After testifying to the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington D.C. about her safety concerns, she was found to have plutonium contamination in her body and her home. Her house had to be stripped and decontaminated, and some of her property destroyed. In addition to Silkwood, her boyfriend Drew Stephens and her roommate Sherri Ellis were sent to Los Alamos National Laboratory for in-depth testing to determine the amount of plutonium in their bodies. While driving to meet with a New York Times journalist and an official of her union's national...

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