On November 13, 1974, Karen Silkwood, chemical technician and labor activist, was driving on a deserted Oklahoma highway when her car crashed into a cement wall, and she was killed. On the seat next to her were doctored quality-control negatives showing that her employer, Kerr-McGee, was manufacturing defective fuel rods filled with plutonium. She had recently discovered that more than forty pounds of plutonium were missing from the Kerr-McGee plant. Fifty years later, her death is still steeped in mystery. Did she fall asleep before the accident, or did someone force her off the road? And what happened to the missing plutonium? The Killing of Karen Silkwood meticulously lays out the facts and encourages the readers to decide. Updated with new, vital information as well as the author's chilling new introduction Silkwood's story is as relevant today as it was fifty years ago. For this updated edition, the author has added the latest information as to what happened to the various people involved in the Silkwood case, given real names to people who heretofore could not be identified, and presented new angles on the lasting effects of this underreported piece of the history of the antinuclear movement.
For this edition, Rashke has added a preface and three short chapters that explore what has been released and learned about the Silkwood case since the book's original publication. Karen Silkwood, an employee of the Kerr-McGee plutonium processing plant, was killed in a car crash on her way to deliver important documents to a newspaper reporter in 1974. Silkwood was a union activist concerned about health and safety issues at the plant, and her death at age 28 was considered by many to be highly suspicious. Was it Kerr-McGee's revenge on a troublesome whistle-blower? Or was it part of a much larger conspiracy reaching from the Atomic Energy Commission to the FBI and the CIA? Richard Rashke leads us through the myriad of charges and countercharges, theories and facts, and reaches conclusions based solely on the evidence in hand. Originally published in 1981, his audiobook offers a vivid, edgy picture of the tensions that racked this country in the 1970s. Now updated, with never-before-revealed names and content, this new volume is an important historical document. Complex, fascinating characters populate this compelling insider's view of the nuclear industry. The issues it explores - whistle-blowers, worker safety, the environment, and nuclear vulnerability -<