he renews the face of the earth

In a January 29 NPR interview, in what must have been an embarrassing slip-up, Bush described nuclear energy as "renewable." Fortunately, he was quickly corrected by a group of environmental and business organizations who sent him a letter informing him that nuclear is, in fact, not a renewable resource.

However, this wasn't the first time that Bush made this mistake. In fact, there have been a few times when he's described nuclear as a renewable form of energy. While I'm inclined to feel a bit embarrassed on his behalf--does he understand anything about how nuclear energy is generated?--I'm also somewhat bemused by how often the press has let this one slip. I mean, if I were interviewing Bush and he said something like that, I'm not sure I could find it in my heart not to correct him. It's such an obvious mistake. But apparently a lot of people hardly even notice it. And even the letter written to correct him didn't explain why nuclear isn't renewable. Which is something I think worth mentioning, since apparently a lot of people are a little confused.

So, just to make sure things are clear: nuclear energy is generated by inducing nuclear fission in a specific type of uranium (U-235). Uranium is found in mines, not grown on trees, and therefore it's not renewable. We can't manufacture it or grow it, and so the supply of it is limited.
On the other hand, a single nuclear plant can generate a huge amount of power from a small amount of uranium. The input of materials required is very small compared to the output, which is why so many people--like President Bush--are excited about nuclear. And perhaps that's why there's a tendency to think about nuclear as though it were renewable, even though it's not: there's still so much of it left that it might as well be renewable, because we won't be running out for thousands of years. Or hundreds. Or whatever.

But for me, that argument is simply intolerable. I've been thinking about why it bothers me so much, because entirely apart from the problem of radioactive nuclear waste, it seems to me that nuclear is an absolutely unacceptable option for a significant energy solution, simply because it's not renewable. It might help for a transition, but it's not a sustainable solution. It's just another energy source that will eventually run out. The fact that it could take thousands of years to run out doesn't strike me as that important. The postponing of an energy crisis to the next generation--even if it's five or six generations in the future---is not just unwise; it's wrong.

I was reflecting on why it seems so wrong to me to postpone this problem. After all, wouldn't there at least be "peace in my lifetime"? But that has always struck me as a terribly ungenerous and selfish thought. And I think this goes deeper than a concern about the most efficient or clean ways of supplying ourselves with power. Our acceptance, or our refusal to accept, an energy source that is not renewable depends on more than our concern about how it will affect us and our environment; it depends on how we see the world.

The Christian view of the world is sacramental. Everything has meaning; everything is sacred. Material things--earth, stars, trees, rocks--are all, in some mysterious way, windows and pictures into the nature of God and the truth of eternal things. They have a calling and a purpose; the trees clap their hands, and the rocks cry out in praise. The earth is the Lord's and not ours; if it is ours to steward, then it is ours to steward as servants, not as kings.

And so it is more than a fear of nuclear waste that makes me shudder at the thought of a shift to nuclear power. It is a sense of divine economy and thrift; it is a fear that we will be wasteful, selfish guardians rather than careful stewards and members of the divine community of creation. G.K. Chesterton wrote of his lifelong wonder and joy in the world as "a sort of sacred thrift...I felt about the golden sun and the silver moon as a schoolboy feels if he has one sovereign and one shilling" (Orthodoxy 69). He was right to feel that way. For, as he says, the jewel that is the universe truly is "without peer and without price: for there cannot be another one" (70). We might someday find a way to live on other planets, but we will certainly never find another universe. Why would we deliberately and thoughtlessly waste even the smallest piece of this one?