URANIUM DERBY centers around an experiment gone wrong—the American nuclear experiment. In the film, director Brittany Prater's investigation into her Iowa hometown's secret involvement in the Manhattan Project triggers a chain reaction of encounters through which it becomes clear that the topic of nuclear waste was more successfully buried than the waste itself. This film depicts the manner in which toxic nuclear waste, generated and collected in a few specific places, was allowed to spread to numerous sites around a small Midwestern university town and subsequently the country.

URANIUM DERBY shows how the problems associated with nuclear waste, first brought about by naive experimentation, were then compounded by a sense of denial. The culture of secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project extends into the present day as corporate interests and federal policy combine to hinder the cleanup of thousands of contaminated sites.

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"Deeply personal...Illuminating...[Serves as] a reminder that nuclear waste cannot be seen or smelled and can lurk beneath an apparently idyllic landscape, doing its damage in secret." Linda Pentz Gunter, Beyond Nuclear International