Word: plutonium
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...cold war, espionage and terrorist novels of the past 20 years were often uncannily predictive; their plots now seem too true to be good. Technology is today's hot pistol, and it is in the hands of the amateur. It may be possible, for example, to heist Plutonium and fashion bombs to hold the world hostage. Private scientists might produce gene-altering chemicals. Almost any handyman can assemble a plastique weapon aimed at a Prime Minister or a whole city block. It is almost a natural consequence that in fiction, the old-line security bureaucracies, from...
Three Mile Island also comes at a time of renewed interest in the case of Karen Silkwood, who was killed in 1974 when her car ran off a road as she was on her way to meet with a reporter to discuss the unsafe handling of highly radioactive plutonium at a Kerr-McGee Corp. plant in Oklahoma. The trial in an $11.5 million suit filed by Silkwood's family against the company is now under way in Oklahoma City...
Silkwood had carried small amounts of plutonium out of the plant and had deliberately contaminated herself and her apartment. Why should she act so bizarrely? Defense Attorney William Paul argued last week that she was emotionally unstable and possibly had been affected by the use of tranquilizers. Paul said she had become deeply involved in a bitter fight between her union and the company, and charged that she had set out to prove that the plant was dangerous by making herself seriously ill. She was, he suggested, kinky...
...herself. The family concedes that it cannot prove who planted the poison, but suggests that someone was out to scare Silkwood-and had certainly succeeded. The Silkwood lawyers will also try to turn Kerr-McGee's argument against itself. If Silkwood could have slipped lethal quantities of plutonium out of the plant, they will ask the jury, does not that mean that any employee could do so? And would not that prove that the "highest due care" as specified in the negligence statutes, had not been exercised...
...family intends to show that the papers Silkwood was carrying on the night of her death would have demonstrated the company's carelessness. Lawyer Gerald Spence claimed in court that Silkwood wanted to "tell the public" that a startling 40 Ibs. of plutonium was missing from the plant. Spence also said she had X rays of fuel rods that had been retouched by the company to conceal faulty seals. Her point: a defective rod could cause a catastrophic accident. The family also intends to call former company employees, including a plant manager, to testify to these and other mishandlings...