An athletic teenage boy, Paul Stephens (Christopher Collet), and his activist girlfriend, Jenny Anderman (Cynthia Nixon), try to warn people in their town in New York that there is a nuclear facility operating in secret there but masquerading as a pharmaceutical research facility. Dr. John Mathewson (John Lithgow) befriends Paul and then falls in love with Paul’s mother, Elizabeth (Jill Eikenberry). Paul and Jenny then steal plutonium and make an atomic bomb for a New York City science fair, realizing later that it could kill millions of people. The doctor also discovers that plutonium is not just a material to work with but a substance that could destroy the ones he loves.