'Radioactive' - Ep. 2: A Powerful Company
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What happened at the Kerr-McGee Plutonium Facility?
We've gotten special permission to be here today, and we've invited Karen Silkwood's son, Michael, to join us. This is the door your mom would have walked through going to work every day. Right. And we have alarms going off. They know we're here. Hope it's not a radioactive detector. All right, I'm getting the cobwebs. There are literally thick cobwebs that look like Halloween decorations. So much about this place feels haunted. 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. There's not much left here in this stripped-down husk of a building. Most of the equipment and furniture's 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 coworkers walked these hallways in white jumpsuits. They were here to process radioactive plutonium and uranium to make fuel rods to power a nuclear reactor. Wow.
You know something? This is really spooky. It gets a little spookier back in here. Great. And the electricity flickering on and off doesn't add to the ambiance at all. 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 flashlights so we don't trip. Watch your step here. It's dark. 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. 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.
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 way to 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. 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.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What happened at the Kerr-McGee Plutonium Facility?
1:58–6:22
2
Who was Karen Silkwood and what was her role?
6:22–21:32
3
What were the working conditions like at Kerr-McGee?
21:32–27:04
4
How did the union fight for workers' rights?
27:04–33:49
5
What incidents highlighted safety concerns at the plant?
33:49–35:57
6
What is the significance of airborne plutonium?
35:57–41:37
7
How did Kerr-McGee's practices impact workers?
41:37–46:53
8
What were the consequences of Karen's activism?
46:53–54:16