The scene where Karen sets off the radiation alarms actually happened. Her level of contamination was forty times the safe limit.
The movie is based on a true story. The picture was released nine years after the events depicted in the film, in 1974.
Movie posters for the film featured a preamble that read: "On November 13, 1974, Karen Silkwood, an employee of a nuclear facility, left to meet with a reporter from the New York Times. She never got there".
When Karen Silkwood's real-life boyfriend at the time, Drew Stephens, saw the film, he was very moved. "It was magic," he told People magazine. "It makes a human being out of Karen instead of a myth."
Reportedly, the production of this film set a legal precedent in the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the protection of confidential sources for filmmakers under the First Amendment, as is the case for media reporters (See: Stephen F. Rohde, 5 Pepp. L. Rev. 351 (1977-1978), "Real to Reel: The Hirsch Case and First Amendment Protection for Film-makers' Confidential Sources of Information").
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