Reactor X-ray: pellet to cooling towers
A 40-second vertical reactor explainer animation, from one fuel pellet to the cooling towers, with heat-camera lenses. Copy it into Claude and edit the text.
A 9:16 film opens on a thermal print of a reactor core and asks how hot it is. It pushes in on the bolted lid, then compares a single fuel pellet with coal. One atom splits, the chain reaction builds, control rods drop, an emergency SCRAM follows, and the steam loop ends at the cooling towers.
Change the opening question, the pellet and coal lines, the split, control rods, SCRAM, three-word and cooling tower lines, plus the brand, core temperature, output in MW and the thermal hot colour. At 1080x1920 it suits Reels, Shorts and TikTok, or a utility's energy explainer.
Use it for
- Nuclear power explainer for Shorts
- Utility brand awareness reel
- Science classroom energy clip
Specs
- Length: 40 seconds
- Format: vertical 9:16 (1080x1920), 30 fps
- Built with: Three.js in HyperFrames
- Category: Explainers
What happens, beat by beat
- 0-1 s Hook. Three-quarter view over the whole core, slow push, the frame already a full thermal print of the core at full power. [hook line: "how hot is it in there?"] and a CORE readout.
- 1-3 s Lid. Macro push on the bolted closure head (lens on the core beneath at 1.2 s, CORE climbs to [core temp: 315] °C), then a long lens straight down the forest of drive housings…
- 3-8 s Pellet vs coal. Macro orbit round one black ceramic fuel pellet standing on a steel rule (FUEL PELLET 8 mm). A lens at 3.9 s shows it white-hot. At 5.2 s the camera sinks…
- 8-12 s Stack. Macro on an open rod top: four pellets drop in with tiny bounces, an end plug seals it. One continuous log pull back from 70 mm to 13.5 m: the assembly's rods rise…
- 12-18 s Split and chain. Top-down zoom into one rod channel. A neutron hits a glossy nucleus; it stretches and splits at 14.2 s (flash, two spinning fragments, three neutron streaks): [split line: "1 split =…
- 18-22 s Control rods. Side cutaway of an assembly row. A black rodlet slides down its guide tube; the pellet stacks beside it cool from orange to deep red. [rods line: "control rods soak up neutrons"]…
- 22-25 s Shutdown. Over the core with 45 rod clusters hanging above. Far rows drop first, a 0.36 s wave toward the lens, all in by 24.4 s. Glow dies row by row; CORE POWER 100…
- 25-30.5 s Loop. Hot leg, steam generator, turbine spinning up, generator copper glowing; OUTPUT lands on [output: 1,100] MW at 30.2 s.
- 30.5-33.5 s Plant. Pull out to the half-cut plant; [three words: "heat, steam, spin"] land at 31.0 / 31.55 / 32.1 s, each with a lens on its part.
- 33.5-40 s Towers. From the ground among the raker legs, crane up the concrete shell as vapour billows out of the lip: [tower line: "water vapour, not smoke"]. Then wide on both towers, dome, turbine hall…
Materials and light
- MeshPhysicalMaterial, roughness at least 0.15: black oxide with clearcoat, mirror steel, zirconium grey, warm brass for hot pipes, copper with load-driven glow.
- Studio env: procedural PMREM room, near-black with hard vertical strips and one hot top card, over a [backdrop: #B8BEB7] seamless with soft projected floor shadows.
- Water env: dark with [glow: #2F7BFF] Cherenkov blue from below and exponential fog; glow and fog scale with core power, so the rods and shutdown visibly calm the scene.
- Vapour: ray-marched over each lip through a tileable 64³ Perlin-Worley texture, octaves drifting at different speeds so puffs roll as they climb and bend downwind. Three light-march taps plus a…
How the prompt opens
Make a 40-second, 9:16 (1080x1920, 30 fps) 3D explainer of how a pressurised water reactor makes power. Glossy black-oxide and steel hardware sits in a grey studio or glowing blue reactor water, and soft elliptical thermal lenses open over it to show the heat the metal hides. It runs pellet to rod to core, one atom splitting, the chain reaction, control rods, an emergency shutdown, the steam loop, and ends on the cooling towers under [your brand: e.g. an invented utility called HALDA]. Cuts land on a 0.5 s grid (120 BPM). Swap in your own lines, numbers and colours.
The full prompt runs 1,117 words. Copy it free (2 a day) from this page.
Copy the prompt into Claude, or pull the scene into Claude Code and render the MP4 on your machine: how it works.