Nuclear Information Centre
Nuclear Football (2022)
[NIC/GD/003]
Nic Pehkonen, Nuclear Football, 2022 [Custom printed training football(s)].Nuclear Football is simultaneously an artwork and a non-artwork, designed to function as an engagement device about the volumes and long-term management of the UK’s high-level and high activity radioactive waste as well as being a football to be played with. In both respects it is also very much about hazard, risk, care and responsibility and requires decisions to be made about how you choose to engage with it.
Within a gallery setting, it should ideally be free to travel around although this is obviously not without some risk to both audience and other objects. Within a non-art setting it is at risk of becoming irretrievable, lost or even stolen. In both scenarios, how much care you choose to take is up to you or perhaps decided by those who have been assigned the role of temporary custodian (such as gallery staff or event organisers).
Although it relates primarily to the UK’s nuclear waste volumes, the concept of Nuclear Football can be applied to any state where legacy nuclear waste resides and in whatever form that may take. A number of countries are also currently in the process of implementing their own long-term nuclear waste management and disposal programmes with all the difficulties and challenges this entails in terms of looking after existing waste in “temporary” storage, public engagement and final repository site selection in the case of final disposal.
Where will our homegrown nuclear waste finally come to rest?
Football is also a globally popular pastime whereas living and working in the proximity of radioactive waste is probably less appealing to most people.
A limited number of footballs are also available to buy at £50 GBP each plus postage so, if you would like to become the semi-permanent custodian of a Nuclear Football, please contact Nic through Nuclear Information Centre enquiries.
EDF Energy Games (2023).
44AD Gallery, Bath, UK (2023).
Out and about around Zwickau, Germany. [Image credit: Carlo Dietl].
Visiting an exhibition of the Wismut art collection in Zwickau, 2025. [Image credit: Carlo Dietl].
Deflated but not disheartened on a desk in France, 2025. [Image Credit: Claudio Pescatore].Background to Nuclear Football.
In June 2022, I attended a public meeting of the now dissolved Theddlethorpe GDF Community Partnership which had only recently transitioned from the Working Group stage so the Nuclear Waste Services PR/engagement machine was in full flow. At this meeting there were a number of information packs and other material available to take away including a fold-out infographic leaflet, “Geological Disposal what it is and why it’s needed”.
Something caught my eye in the bottom left-hand corner...
and the artwork more or less made itself in that moment.
Information last updated: Thu 11 Jun 2026
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