Kitty Tucker, a public interest lawyer and antinuclear activist who helped raise national awareness of the case of Karen Silkwood, the nuclear power whistle-blower, died on March 30 in Silver Spring, Md. She was 75.

Her husband, Robert Alvarez, said the cause was complications of a urinary tract infection.

Ms. Tucker was a first-year law student in 1974 when she read that Ms. Silkwood, a technician at a Kerr-McGee plutonium plant in Oklahoma and a union activist, had died in a mysterious car crash on her way to meet with a reporter for The New York Times. Ms. Silkwood had radioactive plutonium in her lungs; Kerr-McGee said she had deliberately contaminated herself to make the company look bad.

Ms. Silkwood had intended to show the reporter, David Burnham, evidence that the plant had numerous safety violations and was endangering the lives of its employees, though no such evidence was found in her car. Union investigators said that the car might have been forced off the road, but that was never proved.

The plant closed the year after Ms. Silkwood’s death, which became a rallying cry for antinuclear activists and helped sow doubts about the nuclear energy industry. In 1983, her story was made into a popular movie, “Silkwood,” starring Meryl Streep in the title role and Cher as a co-worker, directed by Mike Nichols and written by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen. All were nominated for Academy Awards.