The Labour government has been accused of privatising profits and nationalising risks in the nuclear sector after it published a tender offering to pay unlimited sums of money for the clean-up of deliberate and accidental incidents. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) published the details of the ‘CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) Remediation Services Framework’ tender on 14 October 2025.

Unbridled outsourcing in the nuclear sector

The tender says the government is seeking “advice, guidance and access to practical CBRN recovery services to support those who will be responsible for remediation,” with an initial budget of £26m for an eight-year period from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2034.

Both deliberate and accidental incidents are included under the scope of the contract. It says explicitly that the government is seeking the:

supply, transport, deploy and implement remediation and waste management service(s) for use by [Defra] in a CBRN or HAZMAT incident.

CBRN is the abbreviation “commonly used to describe the deliberate or malicious use of CBRN materials with the intention to cause significant harm or disruption,” while HAZMAT “refers to a material that would be a danger to life or to the environment if released – whether deliberately or accidentally – without precautions,” according to the tender notice.

Examples of potential nuclear incidents include terrorists taking materials from the UK’s civil or defence nuclear stockpiles and exploding them in a dirty bomb, exposing the public to radiation. They could also involve workers at nuclear sites accidentally damaging a container and releasing nuclear material to the atmosphere.

Critically, the tender acknowledges that the “number and scale of CBRN incidents over the 8-year framework is extremely difficult to predict,” and as a result, Defra:

reserves the right to …increase the value of the framework at any stage during the lifetime of the open framework.

‘Ignoble example of privatised profits and nationalised risks’ – nuclear expert

BASIC describes itself as:

An independent, non-profit think tank whose mission is to safeguard humanity and Earth’s ecosystem from nuclear risks and interconnected security threats, for generations to come.”

BASIC policy fellow Dave Cullen told the Canary:

The bottom line is that remediating a CBRN incident is extremely costly, and can run to unfathomable figures for the most extreme incidents.

By having a nuclear power sector, we are on the hook for the cost of whatever incidents occur, above a certain threshold. This is baked into the fundamentals of these technologies. Commercial entities are just not able to sustain liabilities at the necessary scale.

According to the World Nuclear Association, the UK has nine operable nuclear reactors with a total of 6.5GW of capacity, generating about 15% the country’s electricity.

Hinkley Point C is in the middle of main construction, Sizewell C is starting construction, and the government is expected to soon announce where it intends to use taxpayer cash to build some of the UK’s first small modular reactors (SMRs).

Cullen continued:

The issue here is that neither the industry nor their outriders in government are being honest with the public about this because it’s well understood that they would object.

It’s yet another ignoble example of privatised profits and nationalised risks that have caused so many problems in the past.

The Canary approached Defra for comment but none was supplied on the record.

Confusing messaging from Defra

However, a Defra spokesperson did tell the Canary that in the case of an accidental release, the costs would normally fall on the party responsible for the release under the ‘polluter pays’ principle, whereby those responsible for causing the pollution are responsible for covering the costs of the associated clean-up and restoration.

They added that in the instance of a deliberate CBRN attack, the responsibility for meeting the costs would in the first instance fall to building owners or occupiers; as it would for dealing with other potentially serious incidents such as fire or flooding.

The spokesperson also said that owners and occupiers of commercial property should consider reserves or additional specialist insurance to provide cover in the event of a CBRN attack, having regard to the risk of their property being affected by contamination, regardless of its origin.

Organisations in the public sector, including local government, are expected to make contingency arrangements in respect of either reserves or insurance for their own buildings, public spaces and amenities. They will be expected to make arrangements to bear the cost of response and recovery in all but the most exceptional emergencies, the spokesperson said.

American nukes at Diego Garcia covered by UK taxpayer funded clean up contract

The tender says it covers a list of 16 UK territories, including the UK itself, as well as locations like Bermuda, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands.

Also on the list is the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). The Indian Ocean archipelago was stolen by the British, who booted its indigenous inhabitants off their land. One of the islands, Diego Garcia, is currently leased to the US as a military airbase.

It is widely reported that the US has nuclear weapons deployed at its base at Diego Garcia, although the US and UK Governments tend not to publicly confirm or deny the locations of deployed nuclear weapons.

If it is the case that the US does have nuclear weapons deployed at Diego Garcia, and if they were to be involved in an incident where nuclear materials were released, the Defra contract would likely see UK public cash used to protect people and nature from any harms resulting from the release.

Featured image via the Canary

By Tom Pashby

This post was originally published on Canary.