Hannah is a perfectly ordinary 16-year-old schoolgirl in the town of Schlitz, northeast of Frankfurt. Her single mother has to attend a congress in another city, leaving Hannah in charge of her pestering little brother Uli. Nevertheless, it’s a very special day for her: she gets her first kiss from Elmar, her new boyfriend. Just at this moment the sirens begin to wail. A core melt accident has occurred in a nearby nuclear reactor. A huge radioactive cloud is heading straight toward Schlitz. In its wake some 38,000 people are immediately killed by the fall-out, thousands of others contaminated.