There was a natural nuclear reactor in Africa a couple billion years ago. Ground water collected in a naturally occurring uranium deposit and acted as a moderator allowing a nuclear reaction to occur. The heat from the reaction would boil the water away causing the reaction to stop until more water seeped into the deposit. This continued for (probably) a few hundred thousand years.
It wouldn’t happen today because the uranium isotope that’s capable of sustaining a nuclear reaction (U-235) decays more quickly than the isotope that’s not, so the naturally occurring uranium that’s around today has to be enriched before it can be used to sustain a nuclear reaction.
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