> diverting this from nuclear waste storage

This is a manufactured product not waste from a nuclear reactor. We use it because it’s an alpha emitter, there’s harder to shield material with similar half lives they are just less useful. I bring this up because longer half lives don’t mean safety. If you’re looking for a weapon, salted nukes are the stuff of nightmares if they use something with a month long half life or several hundred years.

> I don’t know how to gauge

And that’s the issue here, you need to do some more research before making such statements.