Look up some videos by Kirk Sorensen, he's a huge advocate of Thorium reactors and explains how they can be used to burn nuclear waste to zero radioactive potential. His view is also that the long half life of some radioactive isotopes makes them less harmful than those with short half lives, as they emit the same amount of radiation but spread out over a much longer period.

Unfortunately (fortunately if it was allowed) Thorium is relatively common, so TPTB can't get their monopoly on it and have buried the technology to the best of their ability.