'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company

Summary

Podcast Summary: 20/20 – "Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery" (Episode 2: A Powerful Company) Release Date: November 19, 2024
Host/Author: ABC News
Duration: Approximately 50 minutes

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1. Introduction to the Kermagee Plutonium Facility

The episode opens with hosts Ryan Reynolds, Mike Boettcher, and Bob Sands visiting the now-abandoned Kermagee plutonium processing facility near Crescent, Oklahoma. This old farming community, with a population of just over a thousand, lacks major attractions, making the empty white building they stand before particularly striking.

Notable Quote:
"This single-story building looks pretty unremarkable, like the kind of place you'd go past and even notice it."
— Ryan Reynolds [02:02]

The hosts describe the site as the place where Karen Silkwood worked in the 1970s, marking it as the final chapter of her life and their pilgrimage destination to uncover unanswered questions surrounding her mysterious disappearance.

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2. Karen Silkwood’s Role and Concerns

Karen Silkwood was a dedicated worker at Kermagee, initially supportive of nuclear power as a promising energy source. Employed in quality control, she was responsible for inspecting small green fuel pellets containing plutonium and enriched uranium—crucial components for experimental breeder reactors.

Notable Quote:
"Karen never set out to take on a corporate giant or even become a union leader."
— Ryan Reynolds [05:17]

However, after witnessing a series of safety lapses and accidents, Karen's perspective began to shift. Her commitment deepened as she became increasingly aware of the hazardous conditions and potential for catastrophic failures at the plant.

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3. Union Struggles and Leadership

In 1972, over 100 workers, including Karen, went on strike demanding better working conditions, pay, and benefits. The strike, lasting nine weeks, was a pivotal moment for Karen, who emerged as a prominent union leader within the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union (OCAW). Her leadership was groundbreaking, as she became the first woman to hold a leadership position in a predominantly male-dominated union.

Notable Quote:
"Karen was a scientist at heart. She had left college, married my father... maybe this could get her back on track."
— Michael Silkwood [06:26]

Karen's role as a union leader provided her with a formal platform to advocate for workers' health and safety, intensifying her focus on the plant's internal issues.

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4. Safety Issues at the Plant

Throughout the early 1970s, the Kermagee facility faced numerous safety challenges, including leaks and contamination incidents. High turnover rates, long shifts, and the introduction of less experienced workers exacerbated these problems, leading to a deteriorating work environment.

Notable Quote:
"Production was first. They had a quota to meet."
— Jim Smith, Plant Manager [21:08]

Workers like Don Gummo recounted hazardous incidents, such as plutonium leaks and inadequate containment measures. These recurring issues highlighted the company's prioritization of profit over safety, raising severe concerns about both worker and environmental health.

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5. Karen’s Investigation and Risks

Karen's growing awareness of the plant's safety violations led her to meticulously document incidents and gather evidence against Kermagee. Her efforts were aimed at exposing the company's negligence and securing safer working conditions for her colleagues. This clandestine investigation put her at significant personal risk, especially as suspicions grew about her activities.

Notable Quote:
"She started taking notes about incidents that she believed were putting workers at risk."
— Ryan Reynolds [25:10]

Karen's determination to uncover the truth transformed her from an activist into a key whistleblower, making her a target for those who sought to maintain the status quo at the facility.

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6. The Lead-Up to Her Disappearance

As Karen delved deeper into investigating Kermagee's malpractices, she faced increasing threats and surveillance. Her final days were marked by heightened paranoia and fear for her safety, culminating in her last known visit to a friend’s house, where she expressed concerns about being followed. Tragically, this was the last time she was seen alive.

Notable Quote:
"I think seeing me fall and laying there on my ass, she... it was like she crossed the Rubicon."
— Karen Silkwood [24:46]

The episode sets the stage for the unresolved mysteries surrounding Karen Silkwood’s untimely death, hinting at ongoing contamination issues and the unanswered questions that have persisted since her disappearance.

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Conclusion

"Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery" delves deep into the complexities of corporate power, worker safety, and the personal courage of Karen Silkwood. Through detailed storytelling and firsthand accounts, the episode paints a vivid picture of the struggles faced by workers in hazardous industries and the far-reaching implications of industrial negligence.

Notable Quote:
"She had a mission... she had a folder that she carried with her, and I actually made a contribution to that folder."
— Bob Sands [49:46]

As the podcast concludes, it leaves listeners anticipating the next episode, which promises to explore the lingering effects of plutonium contamination in Karen's own home and its role in the enduring mystery of her death.

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Note: This summary focuses solely on the content-rich sections of the episode, omitting advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content segments to provide a comprehensive overview of the key discussions and insights presented.

Transcript

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Mike Boettcher]

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[Bob Sands]

Bid to get 30.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Get 20. 20.

[Mike Boettcher]

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[Bob Sands]

Better get 20. 20.

[Mike Boettcher]

Better get 15. 15, 15, 15. Just 15 bucks a month. Sold.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch.

[Richard Raschke]

$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees. Extra speed slower above 40g. Detailed.

[Ryan Reynolds]

If you drive 40 miles north of Oklahoma City, you reach a town called Crescent.

[Mike Boettcher]

It's an old farming community. Population just over a thousand people. Doesn't have big attractions.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Probably the biggest thing this place is known for is this empty white building we're standing in front of. It looks abandoned.

[Mike Boettcher]

And we're here at what was the Kermagee plutonium facility.

[Bob Sands]

And Bobby does it to you look.

[Mike Boettcher]

Like it did when you were here.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The parking lot out here wasn't all this growed up back then.

[Mike Boettcher]

Scraggly weeds poke through the pavement. A couple of orange dumpsters sit outside like they're waiting for something to happen.

[Ryan Reynolds]

This single story building, it looks pretty unremarkable, like the kind of place you'd go past and even notice it.

[Mike Boettcher]

But for us, this isn't just some random place, not by a long shot.

[Ryan Reynolds]

This is what used to be the Kermoge plutonium processing facility. The place where Karen Silkwood worked in the 1970s. I've actually been here a few times before. I've reported on the decades long process of getting this plant cleaned up after it closed. Well, they insist that this building is completely decontaminated.

[Mike Boettcher]

Let's go take a look, huh?

[Bob Sands]

We've gotten special permission to be here today, and we've invited Karen Silkwood son Michael to join us.

[Mike Boettcher]

This is the door your mom would have walked through.

[Bob Sands]

Going to work every day, Right?

[Ryan Reynolds]

And we have alarms going off.

[Don Gummo]

They know we're here.

[Mike Boettcher]

Hope it's not a radioactive detector.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Ooh. All right, I'm getting the cobwebs.

[Mike Boettcher]

There are literally thick cobwebs that look like Halloween decorations. So much about this place feels haunted.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The three of us are here on a kind of pilgrimage. We have a lot of unanswered questions about what happened to Karen Silkwood. This site represents the last chapter of her life. So we've come here to see where that chapter started. Watch your step. They got some wires strung out across here.

[Mike Boettcher]

There's not much Left here in this stripped down husk of a building, Most of the equipment and furniture has been taken out. So it makes it kind of hard to imagine what it would have looked like when Karen worked here, when she and her co workers walked these hallways in white jumpsuits. They were here to process radioactive plutonium and uranium to make fuel rods to power a nuclear reactor.

[Bob Sands]

Wow. You know something?

[Mike Boettcher]

This is really spooky.

[Bob Sands]

It fell to this day, it gets.

[Ryan Reynolds]

A little spookier back in here. Great. And the electricity flickering on and off doesn't add to the ambiance at all.

[Mike Boettcher]

It's a very unnerving place to be. It's echoey and hard to see. Not friendly, not warm. We have to use our phone flashlight so we don't trip.

[Bob Sands]

Watch your step here. It's dark.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Knowing how much radioactive plutonium traveled in and out of this place and according to government documents, into the bodies of the people who worked here, all of it just kind of gives me the creeps.

[Mike Boettcher]

This hollowed out plant is a place of contradictions. Once, more than 50 years ago, it was a symbol of hope and new beginnings for Karen Silkwood. For the state of Oklahoma, where energy companies offered some of the best paying jobs around and even hope for a growing energy thirsty nation looking for new sources of power.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Plutonium didn't exist on earth until man brought it to life in a nuclear reactor. And tomorrow, plutonium will be furnishing much of the electric power for your home. Back in Karen's day, there were plenty of politicians and big business types who insisted that nuclear power could be the wave of the future. That it could be cheap, abundant and clean. That nuclear power would drive the nation and provide a limitless source of electricity. And that it would pave the way for American energy independence.

[Mike Boettcher]

But of course, the dream of cheap and abundant nuclear power never became a reality. And Karen's hopes of contributing to that dream didn't work out either.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Karen never set out to take on a corporate giant or even become a union leader.

[Bob Sands]

But she believed the place was dangerous for workers and maybe even for the rest of us. And she couldn't look away.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And she may have ended up paying a big price for that.

[Mike Boettcher]

From ABC Audio this is Radioactive. The Karen Silkwood Mystery Episode 2 A Powerful Company I'm Mike Boettcher.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And I'm Bob Sands.

[Mike Boettcher]

In 1972, an ad ran in the daily Oklahoma newspaper opening for male or.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Female to work as a technician with scientists and engineers. You only need a high school degree and some college chem to qualify the.

[Mike Boettcher]

Job was perfect for Karen. She loved chemistry and science in general. Here's Karen's son Michael, again.

[Ryan Reynolds]

She was a scientist at heart. So, you know, she had left college, married my father. She probably was like, hey, I'm getting to get back into a scientific field, which is something that she really excelled at and wanted to be a part of. Maybe this could get her back on track, a fresh start after her divorce and having to leave her kids behind.

[Bob Sands]

The job was at a nuclear fuel processing plant that was owned by the Kermagee Corporation. They were a huge oil and gas company that had been making a big push into nuclear power. Here's a clip from the Oklahoma Historical Society.

[Jim Smith]

Kermugee refers to itself today as a.

[Mike Boettcher]

Natural resources company, or in addition to petroleum, it is deeply involved in gas and coal and is one of the.

[Jim Smith]

Nation'S largest producers of nuclear energy.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Kermagee no longer exists. It was acquired by another oil company for more than $16 billion back in 2006.

[Bob Sands]

But in the early 1970s, Kerm McGee was a really big deal. It was a Fortune 500 company with nearly 10,000 employees. And its power reach ran deep, real deep, especially here in Oklahoma, where we have streets named after its namesakes.

[Ryan Reynolds]

One of the company's founders, Robert S. Kerr, was governor of Oklahoma in the 1940s and then became a U.S. senator.

[Mike Boettcher]

So the company had real pull in D.C. and the corridors of power on Capitol Hill.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Kerr McGee drilled for oil, they refined it, and then they sold the end products at their filling stations. So they did it all end to end.

[Bob Sands]

And in the early 1950s, they got into the uranium business and later plutonium to make nuclear fuel.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The US Was in the early days of the Cold War. And after World War II, there was this push to figure out how to use atomic energy, not just to build weapons, but also to generate electric power. And that opened the door for Kerr McGee to expand from being an oil and gas company into something more.

[Richard Raschke]

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[Bob Sands]

Our water, our future. Our water, Our future.

[Richard Raschke]

That's in the next season of Reclaimed the Lifeblood of Navajo Nation. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Don Gummo]

Kerr McGee sat in a power seat.

[Mike Boettcher]

That's Richard Raschi. He wrote the book the Killing of Karen Silkwood in 1981. He's updated it and published a new ed for the 50th anniversary of Karen's death.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Raschke says there are a few reasons why the company was so powerful in its day. For starters, the US Government saw Kermagee as being essential to fighting the Cold War.

[Mike Boettcher]

They were a major producer of the materials the US Needed to make atomic weapons, uranium and plutonium.

[Don Gummo]

It also was extremely rich.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's power. And here's another reason why Kermagee was so powerful. The company was friendly with a really important federal agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, or the AEC.

[Mike Boettcher]

The AEC was established just after World War II with a dual mission to both promote and also regulate atomic energy. Balancing those two things got kind of tricky.

[Ryan Reynolds]

They were cheerleaders and also watchdogs. Ever heard of a conflict of interest?

[Mike Boettcher]

Still, in this Cold War period, Raschke says, the AEC was one of the most powerful agencies in America.

[Don Gummo]

So, Kerr McGee it was in the center of a power bubble, and it exploited it whenever it could.

[Bob Sands]

During the 1950s and 60s, the US government put a lot of effort into developing the peaceful atom and getting the public on board. Many experts believe that the same technology that caused so much death and destruction at the end of World War II, if harnessed properly, could be the ticket to progress and prosperity.

[Jim Smith]

There is much more to the radioactive.

[Mike Boettcher]

Atom than a bomb.

[Jim Smith]

Scientists saw its peaceful possibilities from the.

[Mike Boettcher]

Beginning, and today the radioactive atom is hard at work in five broad areas of human endeavor.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The first power Little kids were even pitched messages about the friendly atom on a Disney TV show. The atom is our future. It is a subject everyone wants to understand. So we made plans to build an.

[Bob Sands]

Exhibit at Disneyland that will show you atomic energy in action.

[Mike Boettcher]

By the 1970s, the Cold War was raging and gas prices were rising because of politics and conflict in the Middle East. There were a lot of players here in the US who were really rooting for atomic energy to work to boost energy independence.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And let's not forget, there was money to be Made government contracts to be had. And Kerm McGee, they wanted in on all of it.

[Mike Boettcher]

By 1965, Kermagee was one of just a handful of companies licensed by the federal government to take raw ingredients like uranium and then later plutonium and processed them into radioactive fuel.

[Ryan Reynolds]

In 1972, the same year Karen was hired at Kermagee, the company won a $7.2 million contract to make plutonium powered fuel rods for a new experimental nuclear reactor. One of the largest contracts of its kind.

[Mike Boettcher]

The rods Ker McGee would make were for a kind of prototype for something called a breeder reactor. And it was a big deal. The peaceful Adam on steroids. Now don't ask me what a breeder actor is, because unless you're one of those PhDs, you won't understand it either. But what I do know is President.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Nixon was a big booster of this new breeder reactor technology.

[Mike Boettcher]

He gave a speech in 1971. This was in Washington state where a test breeder reactor was being built. The fuel rods that Kerr McGee made, they'd power this reactor.

[Ryan Reynolds]

These new breeder reactors were designed to generate energy more efficiently than regular reactors. That's because they produced more plutonium than they consumed.

[Bob Sands]

An endless loop of energy, creating more.

[Mike Boettcher]

Energy, creating more energy, and on and on.

[Bob Sands]

Remember, it's the early 1970s. That technology was still very new. Here's Nixon again.

[Mike Boettcher]

It seems to me that if a people are to be a great people, we must always explore the unknown. That is why, as far as this particular matter is concerned, in the terms of nuclear power, we must not be afraid. We must explore it. It's going to mean a better life for our people, and we hope, a peaceful life with peaceful production for all the people of the world. Thank you very much.

[Karen Silkwood]

We all thought we were doing something that was pretty cool, building this breeder reactor.

[Mike Boettcher]

Don Gummo was one of Karen's friends at the Kermagee plant. They worked in labs next door to each other.

[Karen Silkwood]

I was pretty much a proponent of nuclear power back in those days. I wouldn't even call Karen anti nuclear. We, we both thought, at least early on, that we were doing something noble.

[Mike Boettcher]

Karen worked in quality control while she was technically working in a lab. The job was more like being on an assembly line, a nuclear assembly line, like any auto plant worker inspecting parts. But in this case, the part she was inspecting would eventually go inside one of those experimental breeder reactors. You wouldn't want those parts to be defective. The lives of people in communities around nuclear plants depended on it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Karen inspected these small Green fuel pellets. They were about the size of a pencil eraser. Inside each one was a mix of powdered plutonium and enriched uranium.

[Bob Sands]

To give you a sense of how powerful this stuff was, a single pellet, again about the size of a pencil eraser, could generate as much power as about a ton of coal.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Exciting stuff. But after only a few months on the job, Karen saw how the promise of building this new technology collided with reality on the ground. In late 1972, over 100 workers at the plant went on strike, including Karen. They wanted management to address concerns over working conditions, pay and benefits.

[Don Gummo]

Kerr McGee was known as a pretty brutal operation.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Here's Steve Watka, the union rep Karen got to know.

[Don Gummo]

In D.C. they didn't seek to negotiate with its unions. They sought to impose a contract on the workers. And if the workers didn't like the contract, they could go out on strike. And in fact, from late 72 to early 73, there was a nine week strike.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Christmas was coming and it was cold. Kurt McGee seemed to have no trouble finding workers to fill in.

[Karen Silkwood]

It was a good paying job for the time it was above minimum wage and in the middle of Oklahoma, that was pretty good money. So they always had people come to work there.

[Mike Boettcher]

That's Karen's friend Don Gummo again. He was actually hired during the strike.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Don remembers how other union members gave him the stink eye when he crossed the picket line for his job interview.

[Karen Silkwood]

And Karen just, she just stood out to me and I looked at her and when I look back, she's staring right at me. And then she winks at me.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Don was just 20 years old, a skinny Oklahoma farm kid with straight sandy colored hair that grazed his shoulders. Today he's mostly bald with a white goatee and round glasses. Karen called him Gummy for some reason.

[Karen Silkwood]

She and I just hit it off right from the start and we always got along good. And being in adjacent labs, when she'd go to break, I'd go with her and we'd take lunch together. And just over time I really got to know her real well. And I've really got to like her real well.

[Mike Boettcher]

Karen made four bucks an hour. That would be about $30 today actually. Not a bad wage for someone without a college degree, but not exactly big money considering she was handling an incredibly toxic and hazardous substance.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Don Gummo, he never joined the strike or the union.

[Karen Silkwood]

I always say that was my libertarian phase. I just didn't think I needed union membership. I think a lot higher of labor now.

[Mike Boettcher]

Dawn wasn't the only One who wasn't big on the union. As the strike unfolded, other union members ditched the picket line, but not Karen. She stuck it out. By the time that strike was over, she was one of around 20 workers still standing on that picket line.

[Bob Sands]

The strike didn't end well for Karen and the union. Kermgie got the contract it wanted, but for Karen, it was the beginning of something.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That was her first exposure to what a labor union was like and what kind of commitment you had to make to be able to get somewhere. By the summer of 1974, things were not going well at the plant. To meet production demands, Gummo remembers that Kermagee introduced 12 hour shifts. The plant started operating around the clock. People started quitting in large numbers. At one point, AEC documents show turnover hit 35%. Some of the turnover was because they had seasonal workers. But the turnover put even more pressure on workers like Karen and her friend Don Gummo.

[Karen Silkwood]

You know, as we got more into the project and we started having even minor episodes of spills and so on, it kind of changed the environment. They got behind on their schedule of making pellets. That was in early in 74. And we went to around the clock operations at that time. And that's when we had more of those kind of incidences, minor spills and so on. But, you know, it was a chronic situation.

[Mike Boettcher]

It wasn't just the rank and file who had these complaints.

[Jack Tice]

Production was first. They had a quota to me.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Jim Smith was a manager at Kernege's plutonium plant. In this recording from 1979, he talked with documentary producers for an independent film called Dark Circle about the nuclear industry.

[Mike Boettcher]

Smith had been with the plutonium plant since the beginning and says it was well run at first. But he said with turnover, the company brought in more inexperienced, poorly trained workers. And problems multiplied.

[Jack Tice]

Just continual leaks, just one right after the other from furnace leaks over in the powder plant, valve leaks, pipe leaks, tank leaks, just, you might say towards the end, it was just one big leak, basically.

[Ryan Reynolds]

AEC records would eventually show that over 70 workers had been exposed to airborne plutonium. Steve Watka says the Union knew Kerr McGee had a shoddy track record when it came to safe working conditions.

[Don Gummo]

Profit was number one. And if you run a safe plant, if you really take the precautions, it cuts into profit.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Don Gummo remembers this one day when he got hurt in the lab. He was working in something called a glove box. It was this sealed, see through box with thick rubber gloves attached to it. Workers could put their hands in the gloves and handle plutonium inside the box without having to actually come into direct contact with it. It was supposed to keep them safe. On this day, Don was using a hot plate to dissolve some fuel pellets and was using this nitric acid solution he'd poured inside a glass flask. Really nasty stuff. It was a bright, angry red color. Don's bosses had taught him a shortcut to speed up the process by putting a stopper in the flask. It increased the pressure so the solution would heat up faster.

[Mike Boettcher]

Then Karen popped into the lab.

[Karen Silkwood]

Karen stuck her head in and said, hey, gummy, it's lunchtime.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Gimme too. He told her. After his lunch break, he started heating up the flask again. But then there was a problem.

[Karen Silkwood]

But what had happened is while the hot plate was unplugged, it was cooling off. So those stoppers that were pushed into the top got sucked in even tighter. But when I picked one up and I was going to set them off the hot plate and let them cool, and it blew up, it just shattered into a million pieces. And that hot nitric acid, from my point of view, is coming right in my face.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The steaming acid was actually all contained in the sealed glovebox. But his reflexes kicked in in a big way. He fell backwards and cracked his head on the floor.

[Mike Boettcher]

Karen was working in the lab next door.

[Karen Silkwood]

Next thing I know, she's got a respirator and she's coming in there and she's. She just took over and she got an instrument and made sure that the glove box wasn't leaking. It was all squared away. Then she came over and checked me out to make sure I wasn't contaminated.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Don remembers telling Karen that the accident was all his fault, but she was having none of it. She thought it was the company's fault because of time pressure and the shortcuts. He says Karen was like a big sister to him. He remembers her saying, you're just a dumb technician. What do you know?

[Karen Silkwood]

I think seeing me fall and laying there on my ass, she, I. It was like she crossed a Rubicon. It's like that was the final straw in all the stuff that she'd seen going on, that seemed to be a final straw.

[Bob Sands]

She started taking notes about incidents that she believed were putting workers at risk.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Like Don Gamo told us about this other time when he was working in the lab. On this day, some liquid plutonium leaked out of a gasket. His co workers tried to plug the leak with some super absorbent pads and tape. He says this contraption was pretty much universally Referred to and actually looked like a diaper. But this MacGyver diaper didn't suck up all the liquid. A few drops of plutonium spilled on the floor.

[Karen Silkwood]

And then, of course, as it dried, it became a powder again and went airborne. And it literally. We had to throw chairs and instruments and all kinds of stuff out because just a few drops of that coated everything in the room with a film of plutonium.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Airborne plutonium can be extremely dangerous, More dangerous than getting a dusting of it on your skin. Because with airborne plutonium, you can inhale it. And once those particles travel inside the body, the radiation they give off can potentially do a lot of damage, including messing with your DNA and potentially causing cancer.

[Mike Boettcher]

After the spill, Don and the other lab workers were told to clean up the contamination with this solution called Radiac.

[Karen Silkwood]

It was basically Clorox and Tide. And we would make up a batch of Radiac, pour it on the floor, and then slurp it up with a vacuum cleaner, the ideal being. And it would gather up the. Any particles that were on the floor, and you could just suck them up that way. In this instance, what it did is it took a little bit of radioactive material and spread it uniformly across the whole room. And it was screaming hot. And it was screaming hot for weeks. We had to work in respirators eight hours at a stretch until they could get the mess cleaned up. So it was a big deal.

[Jack Tice]

If it's hot, it's contaminated.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Jim Smith, the supervisor who talked about how the plutonium plant was one big leak. He says that plant workers even had their own lingo to talk about how hot or contaminated something was.

[Jack Tice]

One guy might say hotter than hell, and the next guy say, it's screaming memey. Which means when you put the Geiger counter down there, it counts so fast, all it does is scream. You know, it doesn't go click, click, click. In other words, it's so grossly contaminated, Even the Geiger counter, you can't count it. See, they say it's a screaming mimi. That means the Geiger counter just goes zing. And that's it when you get up there. Millions of disintegrations per minute. Well, that's. That's getting up there.

[Ryan Reynolds]

These sometimes sloppy conditions at the plant, the long shifts and the pressure to work harder and faster. Karen now saw that her friends were getting hurt in the process. All of this was taking a toll. She wasn't sleeping well, especially after working an overnight shift.

[Bob Sands]

Plus, her personal life wasn't going great either. She and her boyfriend Drew Stevens, who also worked at the plant. They'd split up and by this point Karen had moved in with a roommate.

[Ryan Reynolds]

She was depressed and decided to get some help. Here's author Richard Rasky.

[Don Gummo]

Again, she went to a doctor. She couldn't sleep. Part of the reason she couldn't sleep is working 12 hours and sometimes doing double shifts and all the pressure she was under. And so he prescribed quaaludes and she became dependent on them.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Quaaludes are a tranquilizer and they were commonly prescribed for insomnia back in Karen's day. Her boyfriend would later say that Karen started using Quaaludes to calm her nerves. And the fact that Karen took them and other drugs would later be used to discredit her and say she was driving under the influence the night she died.

[Bob Sands]

But we're getting ahead of ourselves because before all that, the safety concerns that Karen had would hit a lot closer to home.

[Ryan Reynolds]

For the first couple years that Karen worked at the plant, her safety concerns, they came mostly from what happened to her friends and co workers, other people. But then, on July 31, 1974, for the first time, Karen was exposed to radioactive plutonium 2. She learned about her exposure the day after her shift when some air filter paper in her lab tested positive for contamination. She was later told that her contamination results were low, at least according to the standards set by the Atomic Energy Commission. Remember, they were the ones who were responsible for setting these standards and for protecting workers like Karen.

[Mike Boettcher]

Up until this point, Karen had been a rank and file union member. But when an election was set up for a leadership position on the union's bargaining committee, Karen said she wouldn't say no if she happened to win.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And she did win. In fact, she became the first woman to ever hold a leadership role in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union at the plant. Here's Steve Watka.

[Don Gummo]

The OCAW was in the early 70s, it was a very male dominated union. The industries we represent, oil refining, chemical plants, huge nuclear facilities, these are all male dominated plants. And it was highly unusual that women worked anywhere and that a woman had risen to a position of leadership in the local union.

[Mike Boettcher]

And now that she was a union leader, she had a formal way to advocate for workers health and safety. Here's Don Gummo again.

[Karen Silkwood]

I always thought of Karen as a force of nature. She, she would get something in her head and she would be driven by it. So I know when she started learning more about the business that we were in, the industry we were in, and the Hazards of it and so on. It had a big effect on her. She was concerned that all these farm kids that they had hired to run this thing were at great risk because they didn't understand what it was they were working with.

[Bob Sands]

Jack Tice was another OCAW union member who served on the bargaining committee with Karen. He's now 88 years old. Did you worry about getting cancer? Did you know about the cancer risk?

[Steve Watka]

I thought I'd be dead, but now.

[Mike Boettcher]

Yeah, but you're still kicking.

[Steve Watka]

I'm still kicking.

[Bob Sands]

You're looking good, by the way.

[Steve Watka]

Thank you.

[Bob Sands]

Jack's union ties run deep. To this day. He hangs out at the local teamsters offices in Oklahoma City, which is where we met up for an interview. He was wearing a US Marines baseball cap and shiny brown cowboy boots.

[Mike Boettcher]

What were Karen's concerns about the plant? Do you know that?

[Steve Watka]

Health and safety issues as far as contamination goes and, you know, wages also.

[Mike Boettcher]

And you shared those same concerns?

[Steve Watka]

Yes, absolutely.

[Mike Boettcher]

And what was that about the safety that had you concerned?

[Steve Watka]

Contaminations. I mean, you. You had contamination get. Get out of the control basically in a room. And you went into full face respirators. We'd work maybe with a full face respirator 10, 12 hours a day, maybe even longer than that in respirators, which is hard.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Working with a respirator is something Don Gummo remembers too.

[Karen Silkwood]

It was a full face respirator and it had a canister. And then, of course, we had to wear a hood underneath the mask. It was a miserable way to spend a shift.

[Mike Boettcher]

After the 1972 strike, workers had returned to the job under Kerr McGee's terms. A big blow for the union. It lost a lot of members, but Karen hung on.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Then, in the fall of 1974, more than a third of the union members at the plant signed a petition requesting to get rid of the union. If enough workers didn't vote to keep the union, it'd be kicked out of the plant. No more collective bargaining.

[Mike Boettcher]

The OCAW wanted to be fighting with Kernegee for safer working conditions. But first it had to fight for its own survival to convince workers that they were better off having the union represent them.

[Ryan Reynolds]

With the vote looming, Karen, Jack and another union leader at the plant told Kermigie management that they needed to miss work for union business. They did not want the company to know that they were secretly flying to Washington D.C. to strategize with national union leaders. It was Karen's first trip to the.

[Mike Boettcher]

East coast at the end of September 1974. Karen arrived at the OCAW's Washington, D.C. offices.

[Ryan Reynolds]

One of the people Karen met on that trip was Steve Watka. We heard from him earlier in the episode. Back then, Steve was a 25 year old legislative staffer with the OCAW. Karen and the other union leaders told Steve and his bosses. That they'd been keeping track of contamination incidents at the plant. Like the diaper incident Gummo described. Incidents where workers had been exposed to radiation. So Steve and his bosses arranged a meeting with the Atomic Energy Commission the next day.

[Don Gummo]

Because the company's handling of plutonium were governed by the Atomic Energy Commission, this agency had regulations. It had the power to take Kernege's license away.

[Bob Sands]

But here's the thing. Ever since the company got a license to process plutonium in 1970, some workers and union members felt the AEC hadn't done much to hold Kernege accountable. For instance, they claimed whenever the AEC sent inspectors to visit the plant, management usually knew about it in advance.

[Don Gummo]

So part of the whole issue was not only was the company doing bad things, but that the Atomic Energy Commission itself hadn't been enforcing the law, hadn't been protecting the workers. And this was the problem with the Atomic Energy Commission. In that they had not come down on this company. Even though it was clear that this company was routinely violating the conditions of its license. You have to understand, there were all these contamination incidents at the plant leading up through to 1974. Kerneguy was never fined a dollar by the AEC.

[Ryan Reynolds]

We reached out to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The government agency that replaced the AEC and now regulates the nuclear industry. A spokesperson told us that while Kermagee had several violations, none rose to the level of requiring fines at that time. The agency also said that Kerm McGee was subject to both scheduled and unscheduled inspections.

[Bob Sands]

When the AEC investigated a report in 1973 that some nuclear material had leaked at the plant. It gave Kermgie a clean bill of health, saying the leak hadn't been a big deal. Kerr McGee officials used the same script when stuff like this came up. Telling the AC they'd cleaned up the problem.

[Ryan Reynolds]

In other words, no big deal, folks. We're following the rules. Nothing to see here. That and no comment was pretty much the company line. So the union's expectations were low. But as Steve, Karen, Jack and another union leader from the plant. Were preparing for the big meeting with the A. Something unexpected happened.

[Don Gummo]

So I'm working with them and we're going over everything. And then this whole issue of quality control. Starts coming up and it's something we had never heard of before and something we were. Had never dealt with before.

[Ryan Reynolds]

This made Steve's ears perk up. Karen and another union member alleged that someone had been tampering with inspection documents at the plant.

[Don Gummo]

They said material and rods that should have failed were being passed, and we think you should know about that.

[Mike Boettcher]

This was news to Steve and his bosses. They started to realize that something really big was at stake if these allegations were true.

[Don Gummo]

The more we thought about this, it was, you know, there could be a meltdown.

[Ryan Reynolds]

A meltdown. A nightmare scenario for the Hanford plant in Washington where the rods were headed that could potentially put lives at risk. But they decided not to tell the AEC about this new potential problem at the plant. Not yet.

[Don Gummo]

We said, okay, look, we've never heard of something like this before. And if you're going to level a charge like this against Kern McGee, it's got to be documented. People have got to see how and where the quality control tests and checks were falsified.

[Bob Sands]

When they showed up at the AEC's offices in Bethesda, Maryland, there were far more AEC people than union people in the room. Karen was the only woman. Steve started ticking through the union's concerns, including how the AEC was allegedly giving Kermgie at advance notice before they did an inspection.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Then Steve moved on to the list of health and safety issues, including the cases Karen had typed up on a yellow piece of paper. All in all, there were 39 allegations. Steve laid them out one by one. It took all afternoon.

[Mike Boettcher]

The union had lodged a formal complaint. Mission accomplished.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But before Karen and the others headed back to Oklahoma, they huddled with Steve and his boss to make a game plan around their bigger, more serious allegation that Kerm McGee was fudging inspection reports. They needed evidence. But how?

[Don Gummo]

We're all sitting there and she says, I'll do it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Karen said she'd poke around the plant and. And see what she could find to document their claims. Before she left, Steve warned her to keep a low profile. He didn't want anyone to know what she was doing.

[Don Gummo]

We were concerned that she was going to get fired. That was the worst thing that we thought could possibly happen. That was about the limit. That was where we were wrong.

[Mike Boettcher]

If she could deliver solid evidence, the plan was to bring that evidence to an investigative reporter.

[Ryan Reynolds]

A big national front page story could force the company to address these problems and give the union some serious leverage in negotiating a better contract.

[Don Gummo]

We wanted to see what we could do to Bring maximum pressure on them in order so that the local can get a decent contract.

[Bob Sands]

That maximum pressure would come if this bombshell story landed in the New York Times. A story that would show the entire world that this company had been making a defective, possibly even dangerous product.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Once Karen got back to Oklahoma, she dedicated herself to this new mission. She started taking notes in a small spiral bound pad she kept hidden in her pocket. Suddenly she was a super snoop. It was up to her to get the goods.

[Mike Boettcher]

She made the turn from being an activist to becoming a spy.

[Bob Sands]

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[Ryan Reynolds]

After the DC trip, Karen and Steve stayed in close contact.

[Mike Boettcher]

Late one night they talked on the phone. Karen had a lot of updates to share and she was talking really fast.

[Don Gummo]

And I said, you know Karen, I can't take notes on this. I gotta tape you. Can I turn it on?

[Ryan Reynolds]

So he turned on a tape recorder.

[Jim Smith]

Okay, now talking to Karen Silkwood. And Today is Monday, October 7th. Been discussing what's been going on in the last week since the people from Kermgge are up here.

[Ryan Reynolds]

As we mentioned before, Karen told Steve she was especially worried about the teenage boys at the plant.

[Jim Smith]

All right, now what about this getting to these kids, joking about getting hot in the laboratory.

[J]

We've got 18 and 19 year old.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Boys, farm kids Kermogy had hired with hardly any training. She said she'd watched some of them playing around with plutonium to see who could get hot or contaminated the quickest.

[Jim Smith]

Okay, then what happened with this gal who this who you had talked to about plutonium and cancer. And she got all concerned. How did that come about again?

[J]

Okay, turn to that page.

[Bob Sands]

Karen flipped through her notes. She tells Steve about an incident involving her friend Jean Young. You heard from Jean in the last episode. She described seeing Karen in the Hub Cafe looking through documents and Jean was one of the last people to see her alive.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Karen tells Steve that Jean had been working in what's known as a Hot room, meaning it was contaminated. Gene was scared and so she asked Karen for help. They went together to ask for a nasal smear. A test where they put a swab up your nose to see whether or not you've inhaled plutonium and how much.

[J]

Okay. She took the nasal smear, you know, and three others did it too.

[Jim Smith]

Where does smear come out?

[J]

24 DPM.

[Mike Boettcher]

DPM stands for disintegrations per Minute. It's one way of measuring radioactivity. According to the AEC, 24 DPMs was safe.

[Bob Sands]

But Steve disagreed.

[J]

Well, you know, that's not super bad. I mean.

[Mike Boettcher]

No, no, no, no, no.

[Jim Smith]

Hold on, hold on, hold on. What I'm trying to tell you what I found out when I was in Minnesota about plutonium getting into your lung and these particles getting into your lung. Well, when these two doctors, when you guys meet up with these two doctors, these doctors are going to flip out when they hear stories you have to tell.

[Mike Boettcher]

Steve was referring to the scientists from the University of Minnesota he was bringing to meet with workers from the plant a few days later to teach them about the dangers of plutonium, including cancer.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So Karen finishes her story about her friend Jean, who had been crying because she was afraid she'd been contaminated. A health safety officer had apparently told Jean she didn't have anything to worry about.

[J]

And more than likely, though, it all came out a nasal smear. This is what he told her. So she stood there a minute and she says, but you don't know that. She said, I could have got some of that down into my lung, Stevie. Going on every day. So it accumulates, doesn't it?

[Jim Smith]

Sure as hell does.

[J]

If you breathe it once a week, every week for five years that you're out there, you're going to have something.

[Jim Smith]

But the whole point is that plutonium is so carcinogenic, is so potent that it's now figured that under the conditions that you work under in that kind of a plant, you don't have to work there for five years. You might only have to work there for one friggin month. And you've got enough of a body burden to cause cancer.

[J]

Steve, don't tell me that.

[Jim Smith]

Well, yes, I'm going to tell you that because I told you that. God, if the union loses this election, I tell you, Karen, you better get.

[Mike Boettcher]

The out of there.

[J]

I'll be gone.

[Mike Boettcher]

I'll be gone.

[Jim Smith]

Karen said that place can turn into a hellhole. It's going to get.

[J]

But I'm going to shut them down.

[Jim Smith]

Before I go well, yeah, well, we've got ideas in that, too, and we know what their Achilles heel is. But, I mean, you know, turn the tape off of this.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's a little hard to hear, but Karen says, I'm gonna shut them down before I go. And then Steve says, we know they're Achilles heel.

[Bob Sands]

When we interviewed Steve in 2024, he told us that he was referring to the doctored quality control allegations that Karen had been looking into because safety issues, sure, those were important. But if Kermagee was shipping off defective fuel rods to the new experimental reactor it was supplying, well, then there was something much bigger going on at the plant. Bigger and possibly more dangerous. More dangerous because the union thought defective fuel rods could really mess with the reactor, maybe even cause a meltdown.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But also more dangerous for Karen, who was now snooping around the plant looking for evidence, jotting it down in her little notebook. Even though Steve Watka told her to keep a low profile, other people started to notice what Karen was doing. Gene Young, the coworker who'd gotten the nasal smear, told the Dark Circle documentary producers in 1980 that Karen was taking a lot of notes. Everything that happened, she had a little notebook. And anything that happened in that plant, she'd put down the date, the time, and where it happened and who it was.

[Mike Boettcher]

Karen's friend Don Gummow, says he even started funneling her documents.

[Karen Silkwood]

She had a mission, because I can remember when she started gathering documentation, she had a folder that she carried with her, and I actually made a contribution to that folder.

[Ryan Reynolds]

She was watching. But she also started to suspect that she was being watched, too.

[Mike Boettcher]

About a month after the D.C. trip, Don got an unexpected visit from Karen.

[Karen Silkwood]

She came over one night. It was after work, so it was like the middle of the night, and she showed up at my house, and she was concerned because she was being followed and she had lost them. She had did her trick with the car and outran him. And she still had concerns, obviously. So she stayed there that night. And actually next morning when she left, that was the last time I ever saw her alive.

[Bob Sands]

About a week later, Karen would have something else tormenting her. Plutonium contamination in her own home. That's next time. We're taking a break next week for Thanksgiving, but we'll be back with a new episode on December 3rd. Radioactive the Karen Silkwood Mystery is a production of ABC Audio in collaboration with Standing Bear Productions. I'm Mike Boettcher. My co host Bob Sands, and I served as consulting producer on this podcast along with Brent Dones. Thanks to the ABC News Investigative Unit and investigative producer Jenny Wagner Courts chief investigative reporter Josh Margolin, reporter producer Sasha Pesnick and associate producer Alexandra Myers. This podcast was written and produced by senior producer Nancy Robert Rosenbaum and Vika Aronson. Tracy Samuelson was our story editor, associate producer and fact checker Audrey Mostak story consultant Chris Donovan supervising producer Sasha Aslanian. Original music by soundboard mixing by Rick Kwan. Ariel Chester was our social media producer. Special thanks to Liz Alessi, Katie Dindos, Cindy Galley and the University of Oklahoma's Gaylord College of Journalism. Josh Cohan is ABC Audio's Director of podcast programming. Laura Mayer is our executive producer.