Cadmium never decays. It isn't dangerous for 10 kiloyears. It's dangerous forever. And I guarantee you that your average barrel of cadmium is worse to deal with

Cadmium never decays. It isn't dangerous for 10 kiloyears. It's dangerous forever. And I guarantee you that your average barrel of cadmium is worse to deal with than your average nuclear waste flask. Even more than that, a nuke plant generates, amortized, several tons of waste per year. A few flasks. Which can get shoved into a volume the size of your garage. And then you basically forget about it. Unlike, say, a coal plant, which generates a reservoir worth of awful ash a year. Containment isn't even an option there. Even more than that, even if our nuke plants vented directly into the atmosphere every now and then they'd still put out less radioactive waste than coal plants. Seriously, the only reason nuclear waste is dangerous is because it's concentrated. If we held nuclear plants to the same standards we do coal plants, "safe, permanent disposal" would be as simple as dumping it into the ocean and making sure it mixed up.