My Dad worked with Edward Teller, and Teller was often at our house while I was growing up. The Peter Sellers character was totally different than Teller in real life. Teller was a refined gentleman. Peter Seller's character was funny, and not at all like Teller.
BTW, I think that we are fortunate to have all survived the cold war!
The book "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" doesn't present Teller in a particularly favorable light - he is presented as being very political, scheming and rather two faced (i.e. being perfectly civilized directly to Oppenheimer while working closely with those people who undermine Oppenheimer).
"Teller was one of the strongest and best-known advocates for investigating non-military uses of nuclear explosives, which the United States explored under Operation Plowshare.
One of the most controversial projects he proposed was a plan to use a multi-megaton hydrogen bomb to dig a deep-water harbor more than a mile long and half a mile wide to use for shipment of resources from coal and oil fields through Point Hope, Alaska...
A related experiment which also had Teller's endorsement was a plan to extract oil from the tar sands in northern Alberta with nuclear explosions, titled Project Oilsands."[1]
BTW, I think that we are fortunate to have all survived the cold war!