In Japan, fears about nuclear fallout have only been getting worse as disaster cleanup crews struggle with radioactive water leaking out of the Fukushima plant. The Nation’s Christian Parenti, author of Tropic of Chaos, thinks crews will be working to encase the water in sand and concrete, which is what happened in the aftermath of Chernobyl.

Joining Martin Bashir on MSNBC, Parenti argues that “with technology that’s as dangerous as atomic power, people need to be very, very careful about what they don’t know.” A large part of northeast Japan, Parenti concludes, is now going to be a “sacrifice zone,” a contaminated area which will remain inhospitable for thousands of years.

—Kevin Gosztola