diff --git a/openmc/_utils.py b/openmc/_utils.py
deleted file mode 100644
index d00e4c58b7..0000000000
--- a/openmc/_utils.py
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,70 +0,0 @@
-import hashlib
-import os.path
-from pathlib import Path
-from urllib.parse import urlparse
-from urllib.request import urlopen, Request
-
-_BLOCK_SIZE = 16384
-
-
-def download(url, checksum=None, as_browser=False, **kwargs):
-    """Download file from a URL
-
-    Parameters
-    ----------
-    url : str
-        URL from which to download
-    checksum : str or None
-        MD5 checksum to check against
-    as_browser : bool
-        Change User-Agent header to appear as a browser
-    kwargs : dict
-        Keyword arguments passed to :func:urllib.request.urlopen
-
-    Returns
-    -------
-    basename : str
-        Name of file written locally
-
-    """
-    if as_browser:
-        page = Request(url, headers={'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0'})
-    else:
-        page = url
-
-    with urlopen(page, **kwargs) as response:
-        # Get file size from header
-        file_size = response.length
-
-        # Check if file already downloaded
-        basename = Path(urlparse(url).path).name
-        if os.path.exists(basename):
-            if os.path.getsize(basename) == file_size:
-                print('Skipping {}, already downloaded'.format(basename))
-                return basename
-
-        # Copy file to disk in chunks
-        print('Downloading {}... '.format(basename), end='')
-        downloaded = 0
-        with open(basename, 'wb') as fh:
-            while True:
-                chunk = response.read(_BLOCK_SIZE)
-                if not chunk:
-                    break
-                fh.write(chunk)
-                downloaded += len(chunk)
-                status = '{:10}  [{:3.2f}%]'.format(
-                    downloaded, downloaded * 100. / file_size)
-                print(status + '\b'*len(status), end='', flush=True)
-            print('')
-
-    if checksum is not None:
-        downloadsum = hashlib.md5(open(basename, 'rb').read()).hexdigest()
-        if downloadsum != checksum:
-            raise IOError("MD5 checksum for {} does not match. If this is "
-                          "your first time receiving this message, please "
-                          "re-run the script. Otherwise, please contact "
-                          "OpenMC developers by emailing "
-                          "openmc-users@googlegroups.com.".format(basename))
-
-    return basename
diff --git a/tests/unit_tests/test_utils.py b/tests/unit_tests/test_utils.py
deleted file mode 100644
index 9906f5f387..0000000000
--- a/tests/unit_tests/test_utils.py
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,26 +0,0 @@
-import os
-import filecmp
-
-from openmc import _utils
-import pytest
-
-@pytest.fixture()
-def download_photos(run_in_tmpdir):
-    """use _utils download() function to download the same picture three times,
-       twice to get unique names, & a third time to use the already downloaded
-       block of code"""
-    _utils.download("https://i.ibb.co/HhKFc8x/small.jpg")
-    _utils.download("https://tinyurl.com/y4t38ugb")
-    _utils.download("https://tinyurl.com/y4t38ugb", as_browser=True)
-
-
-def test_checksum_error(run_in_tmpdir):
-    """use download() in such a way that will test the checksum error line"""
-    phrase = "MD5 checksum for y4t38ugb"
-    with pytest.raises(OSError, match=phrase):
-        _utils.download("https://tinyurl.com/y4t38ugb", as_browser=True,
-                        checksum="not none")
-
-
-def test_photos(download_photos):
-    assert filecmp.cmp("small.jpg", "y4t38ugb")