"Silkwood"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that "Silkwood" is a disturbing movie because, at first, the film comes across as being a horror story and then it strikes you that it is really a true story. The author explains that the movie is about Karen Silkwood, a chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee's plutonium fuels production plant in Oklahoma who investigates the breach of safety conditions at the plant and possible plutonium exposure, but soon dies in a suspicious car accident. The paper also relates what happened after Karen Silkwood's: After her death, her relatives sued the Kerr-McGee plutonium fuels production plant in a civil case for the inadequate health and safety conditions at the plant that led to Silkwood's contamination.

From the Paper:

"Twelve years after Karen Silkwood's death, in 1986, the case benefited from a retrial, however it did not end up in front of a court and it was settled for the amount of $1.3 million . It seems that there was more to the story and some new evidence had surfaced in the case as the media of the time reported. There allegedly were ample pieces of evidence that Karen Silkwood had been deliberately contaminated with plutonium, only to be murdered some days later. The accusations from the trial had gone even further. It was alleged that Karen Silkwood had discovered a large conspiracy which involved a number of US public institutions regarding a network of international plutonium smuggling."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Los Alamos National Library, The Karen Silkwood Story, Nuclear Reaction, Frontline, 23 November 1995, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/silkwood.html
• Chase, Anthony, The Cinema of Tort Liability, Movies on Trial, The New York Press, New York, 2002
• Rashke, Richard. The Killing of Karen Silkwood: The Story Behind the Kerr- McGee Plutonium Case, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1981
• Rustad, Michael, Nationalizing Tort Law: The Republican Attack on Women, Blue Collar Workers, and Consumers, Rutgers Law Review 48 (1996), 673
• Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Company

More papers on "Silkwood":

• Film Review # 129134 : "'Silkwood'"

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