Not a nuclear engineer, but we covered this in my third semester of physics at University. The short answer is there isn't any engineering reason why you can't do this. The "real" reason is that there is liability here that nobody knows how to deal with. If the unit became damaged and its shielding failed it could sit there and kill people who came near it for years (for example).
I got to talk to one of the engineers who worked on KRUSTY[1] a 10kW nuclear reactor. This combined with some batteries for peak load could run pretty much any house for a couple of decades. (they talk about several houses in the article but realistically the peak load of a single house when the oven, refrigerator/freezer compressor, and central AC are running is a bit north of 10kW. I would seriously consider a way off grid ranch house if I could have one of these to power it :-)
So true, of course if I lived in a place where it snowed I would put water pipes under the sidewalks and driveway and recirculate water through them and a heat exchanger near the reactor. Voila, no more shoveling snow!
I got to talk to one of the engineers who worked on KRUSTY[1] a 10kW nuclear reactor. This combined with some batteries for peak load could run pretty much any house for a couple of decades. (they talk about several houses in the article but realistically the peak load of a single house when the oven, refrigerator/freezer compressor, and central AC are running is a bit north of 10kW. I would seriously consider a way off grid ranch house if I could have one of these to power it :-)
[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a20127140/n...