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'Radioactive' - Ep. 3: Contaminated
Tue, 03 Dec 2024 14:30:00 -0000
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We retrace the final days of Karen’s life: she’s been so badly contaminated by radioactive material that men in hazmat suits show up to inspect her apartment, strip much of it down to the studs, and seal her possessions into 55-gallon drums for disposal. Karen grows fearful the contamination will kill her. Years after her death, Karen's family sues Kerr-McGee for the contamination and for the first time, her allegations against the company are tested in court. Follow "Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery" now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your podcast app of choice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What were the initial findings about Karen Silkwood's contamination?
Kerr-McGee kept an eye on Karen's exposure levels for the next few weeks. And in terms of new exposures, things were kind of quiet for Karen from August through October. But in early November, Karen's contamination started to get a lot more serious. Serious and also mysterious. Tuesday, November 5th.
Eight days before Karen's death. Karen had been working with plutonium in a glove box. She waved her hands in front of a radiation monitor and they were contaminated. That meant a trip to the company's health physics office for a more thorough check. According to Richard Raschke, author of The Killing of Karen Silkwood, the process went something like this.
They would use a counter up and down your body to see whether they detected any contamination like on your clothing, on your body. Click, click, click, click, click, click, you could hear it. The next thing is they took nasal swipes. Put a cotton on a stick up your nose and then hold it against the counter.
Click, click, click, click, click, click, click. A health physics officer checked Karen and got readings on her coveralls, her body, and on a nasal smear, according to court documents. But she'd been working in a sealed glove box. There was no leak in the glove, and there was no radiation in the room. How on earth had she gotten contaminated?
Karen headed to the showers to try to wash the radiation off, but this wasn't any normal shower. It was high-pressure water beating down on her skin, plus scrubbing at the radioactive contamination with Tide detergent and bleach. Here's Steve Watka again. You're essentially rubbing off that layer of skin. So your skin is becoming raw.
It was a painful, miserable process. And turns out, according to one expert we talked to, it could also be a very bad idea to rub someone's skin raw when they've been exposed to plutonium. It could actually allow the plutonium to get into the body instead of removing it. These days, decontamination protocols try to avoid damaging the skin.
After the scrubdown, Karen was sent home and told to collect samples of her urine and stool for five days, which was standard practice after that kind of exposure. The company wanted to monitor how much plutonium was passing through Karen's body as a way of estimating how much internal contamination she had. On the next day, Karen went back to work.
Karen got to the plant just before 8 a.m. She did some paperwork and didn't handle any plutonium, according to trial testimony. That day, the union had its first bargaining meeting with the company to negotiate their new contract. So on her way from the laboratory to the meeting... She checks herself, and she's hot.
This is the second day in a row. It was on her arm, which meant another trip to the health physics department, where they tried to wash the contamination off with soap and water. It didn't budge. They decontaminated her partway. They can't get part of it off. It's actually fixed in her skin.
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Chapter 2: How did the union play a role in the safety meeting?
The second thing the Silkwood side had to prove was that it was Kerr-McGee's negligence that allowed the plutonium to escape the plant and make its way into Karen's apartment. Because, as Spence explained, if the lion got away, Kerr-McGee has to pay. It's that simple. That's the law. If the lion got away, Kerr-McGee has to pay.
Meaning, since Kerr-McGee's plutonium got away into Karen's home, they were responsible for Karen's contamination, and they owed the Silkwood estate. So Spence tried to convince the jury that Kermagee was the kind of lax operation where plutonium could escape without people noticing.
They brought in Don Hammock, an Oklahoma State trooper turned operator at Kermagee's plutonium plant. He testified that, quote, there was no security at the plant. What do you mean there was no security? Jerry Spence asked him. There was nobody to check or see what anybody was taking out. You could have taken it out of there any way you wanted to do it, Hammock said.
How could you have taken it out? You could put it in your pocket if you wanted to. How much could you take out? All you could carry, Hammock said. And remember the 40 pounds of missing plutonium that Karen called her ex-coworker James Knoll about? Well, that came up too.
There was a dramatic moment before the trial even started. The judge was considering testimony alleging the smuggling of nuclear material out of the plant. And after a closed-door meeting with high-ranking officials from the FBI and the CIA, the judge said the testimony wouldn't be allowed due to national security concerns.
He later wrote in his memoir that any disclosure of what he learned in that meeting, quote, would have international repercussions and endanger the lives of secret operatives and greatly damage our national security. But also, he said, he didn't think the information had any relevance to the Silkwood case.
And then during the trial, Jim Smith, the plant manager you heard earlier in this episode, testified that on Kerr-McGee's watch, 40 pounds of plutonium could have gone missing, just like Karen had alleged.
Kerr-McGee acknowledged that there was some unaccounted for material, but that it wasn't missing. and it hadn't left the plant. Instead, they said, it was just inside their equipment, spread over tanks, surfaces, glove boxes, and nearly a mile of piping throughout the building.
They said Karen's contamination didn't happen because of their negligence. Instead, they repeated a familiar argument. Karen contaminated herself, and Art Angel says they tried to prove that by attacking her lifestyle.
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