Home nuclear reactor?

Question

I have heard some claim that some legal forms of uranium can be used to make a home nuclear reactor. This true or total bs? If so, there like some UFO chasing, techie, conspiracy theory type running Linux at home running their reactor somewhere in the mountain states with a half megawatt box buried in the back acres of his ranch?

Answer 1

you can buy uranium, its not that hard. but what the problem is is that any uranium that you can legally buy is U-238, and you need U-235 for a nuclear reaction.

there is no way you could ever own a nuclear powered generator for personal use. 2 reasons; one is that any actual nuclear reactor would have the potential to explode, and when you have only a house hold full of people looking after the temperature and pressure of the reactor the chance of a small scale nuclear explosion increases. not to mention the nuclear waste that the family would some how have to take care of. its just not easy enough for a single family to maintain. thats assuming they could enrich uranium and build a containment facility to contain the chain reaction, and then build something to harness that energy.

and also, theres no way they would allow the ability for people to own nuclear generators, because thats just giving people small nuclear bombs. if it were available to get enriched uranium no country would go through the trouble of getting centrifuges and enriching the uranium, they would just buy it.

and i dont know much about this (well i know about uranium and nuclear power) and the first poster could be right. there could be a small nuclear device used in some hospital somewhere. but ill 100% guarantee that it runs on natural U-238, is an extremely extremely low yield, and has a staff of people devoted solely to maintaining that device.

EDIT: ahh, misread the first post. yes, that makes complete sense. i can see a small reactor, under 25 feet of water, with unrefined uranium, at a university. no more confusion on my part.

Answer 2

You could make a low-power nuclear reactor with unrefined uranium, that might be useful for making medical isotopes for example; but it would be pretty useless for power generation. Not to mention staggeringly dangerous.

I have actually seen a reactor of this type in operation; it is the Slowpoke nuclear reactor in the dentistry-pharmacy building at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. It's about 100 metres from the university bus stop, in the basement. It's under about 25 feet of water, and I saw it when it was shut down and the cover was removed, and there was beautiful eerie Cherenkov radiation streaks coming from the core.