Named after the World War II-era program, the plot revolves around a gifted high school student who decides to construct a nuclear bomb for a national science fair. The film's underlying theme involves the Cold War of the 1980s when government secrecy and mutually assured destruction were key political and military issues. A high school prodigy builds an atomic bomb with stolen plutonium to win the 45th National Science Fair and expose a nuclear weapons lab posing as a nuclear medical research facility in Ithaca, NY.