Nuclear Information Centre
Nuclear Football (2022)
[NIC/GD/003]
Nic Pehkonen, Nuclear Football, 2022 [Custom printed football].Depending on how you choose to interact with it, Nuclear Football is on one level, a free-roaming exhibit about hazard, risk, individual and collective responsibility and the uncertainty around finding a suitable underground site and willing host community in which to permanently dispose of the UK’s most hazardous nuclear waste. It is also a football, designed to be played with along with all the potential risks and hazards this involves.
As of 2022, according to Nuclear Waste Services who are administering the siting process on behalf of the UK government, 750,000m3 of high-activity radioactive waste is destined for disposal inside a future UK Geological Disposal facility or GDF. This is nominally calculated to be the equivalent of a football sized amount per person.
We do not yet know where a UK GDF may end up but we are asked to trust the process which at present is following a volunteer led, consent-based model, albeit extending to England and Wales only.
As of 2026 there are just two active GDF Community Partnerships, both situated in West Cumbria where the nuclear industry has become embedded since the 1950s and the majority of the UK’s nuclear waste currently resides. However, it is not a given it will ultimately remain in the region as the geology has to be deemed suitable and a final test of local public support must be passed before a GDF can be built.
Until then, Nuclear Waste Services are optimistically saying the door remains open for new communities to join the siting process, although none have emerged in the last 2 years. Whilst it can probably be said with some confidence that football is broadly popular in the UK, it seems that volunteering to play host to our nuclear waste isn’t.
It is always interesting to see where the Nuclear Football will end up and what state it will be left in, whether it is operating in an art or non-art environment but remember, how much care you take with it is always a matter of both individual and collective responsibility.
A limited number of footballs are also available to buy at £50 GBP each plus postage so, if you would like to become the responsible custodian of a Nuclear Football, please contact Nic through Nuclear Information Centre enquiries.
Nuclear Football in action at the 2023, EDF Energy Games.
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: Mon 19 Oct 2026
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