The US government might not know where to store its spent nuclear waste, but that sure hasn’t stopped it from sending it all across the country.
One of the truckers involved in carting the hazardous materials on behalf of Uncle Sam is Tommy Cash, who was recently named one of five Professional Drivers of the Year at the Truckload Carriers Association’s annual convention in Orlando, Florida.
While there’s no doubt Cash is a fine driver regardless of what he’s hauling, it’s his safety record with radioactive slag that really stands out. According to trucking publication CDL Life, Cash has clocked more than 3.5 million safe miles over his 43 year career, over half of which came as a waste shipment driver for a federal contract firm.
In logistics, “safe miles” are performance metrics some companies use to track consecutive miles driven without accidents, injuries, or cargo damage. (To put Cash’s accomplishment in context, despite employing about 14,000 drivers, Walmart just had its first driver ever reach 5 million safe miles back in 2020.)
Cash lives up to his name, too: on top of the bragging rights, the hazardous waste driver was awarded a $20,000 prize.
Throughout his career, the majority of Cash’s hauls have been made up of “debris, residues, soil, and other items contaminated with radioactive elements — largely plutonium — that have atomic numbers greater than uranium,” reads a US Department of Energy memo on the driver.
While it’s not known exactly how much nuclear junk Cash has hauled throughout his career, we can estimate based on nuclear waste restrictions that he’s shepherded tens of thousands of 55-gallon drums, and easily millions of gallons of radiated sludge. Regardless of the exact number, it’s clear the award was richly deserved.
More on nuclear waste: Worker Falls Into Nuclear Reactor