Contract award

Nuclear Waste Services places two combustible waste call-offs with Veolia

By Staff Writer  |  20 August 2026

Nuclear Waste Services Limited has placed two call-offs with Veolia ES (UK) Limited for the treatment of combustible radioactive waste, one valued at 14,100,000 pounds and the other at 2,300,000 pounds, both excluding value added tax. Both awards are dated 19 August 2026. The notices were published on the official tender service at 8:19am and 10:14am on 20 August 2026.

The larger call-off is described in its notice as the Bulk Combustible Bulk Order. Its value is recorded as 14,100,000 pounds excluding tax and 16,920,000 pounds including tax. The smaller is the Bagged Combustible Bulk Order, recorded as 2,300,000 pounds excluding tax and 2,760,000 pounds including tax. The two published figures add to 16,400,000 pounds excluding tax, and that total is the sum of the two figures rather than a number either notice states.

Both call-offs are made under the Treatment and Conditioning Services Framework 2026 to 2030 and both run for the same four years, from 3 September 2026 to 2 September 2030. The standstill period on each ends at 11:59pm on 1 September 2026. The legal basis given on both notices is the Procurement Act 2023, and each records the award as being above threshold and as a services procurement.

The service descriptions differ, and the difference is the point of having two orders rather than one. The bulk order covers lifecycle management of the service, consignment receipt, unloading and pre-treatment of waste to enable incineration and recycling, which the notice explains as segregation, size reduction and cable stripping, then incineration of the waste, disposal of all secondary waste to a suitably permitted facility, technical support, and project close out and learning from experience. The bagged order covers lifecycle management, consignment receipt, unloading of the waste, incineration, disposal of all secondary waste to a suitably permitted facility, container returns in line with schedule requirements, technical support, and project close out and learning from experience.

Both notices carry the same classifications for radioactive waste: treatment, collection, transport, packaging, storage and disposal. Neither notice names a site. Both record that the buyer procures on behalf of its customers, which it defines as any organisation that holds, or may in future enter into, a waste services contract with it, and the definition extends across the private sector and a long list of public bodies, including government departments, executive agencies, police, fire and ambulance services, health bodies, schools, colleges and universities, housing associations and councils.

What the practitioner should take from this

The first point is the pre-treatment wording, because it is the part of the scope that decides where the commercial risk sits. Segregation, size reduction and cable stripping are labour and plant operations performed on material whose composition is only fully known once the consignment is opened. A call-off that prices those operations at a rate carries a different exposure from one that prices them at a lump sum, and the schedule of rates, rather than the headline value, is where that argument will be had.

The second point is the split between bulk and bagged. Container returns appear in the bagged scope and not in the bulk scope. Where a contract requires containers to be returned in line with schedule requirements, the schedule becomes a delivery obligation with its own float, and a delay in returns can hold up the consignor rather than the treatment provider. Anyone administering either order should read the return schedule as a programme document and not as an administrative annexe.

The third point concerns the customer definition. Both notices record that the buyer procures on behalf of a defined class of customers rather than for itself alone. That structure separates the party that ran the procurement from the parties that will place and pay for the work. The practical questions that follow are which entity gives the instruction, which entity carries the payment obligation, and what happens to the call-off if a customer's own waste services contract ends part way through the four years.

The fourth point is the standstill date. Both awards were made on 19 August and both standstill periods end on 1 September, so the two orders share a single challenge window even though they were published nearly two hours apart. Anyone considering the published outcome should work to the earlier of the two publication times rather than assume the clock runs from the later notice.

The fifth point is that both awards are recorded as pending rather than active. The decision has been taken and notified and the contract is not yet in force, which is the ordinary position during standstill. It means the four year period on each notice is the intended period and not a confirmed one.

No tender count, award criteria weighting or unsuccessful bidder is published on either notice, and none is stated here.