Science in Christian Perspective

Letter to the Editor

Nuclear Waste Can Be Handled
Everett Irish 
Battelle, Pacific Northwest Laboratories
Richland, Washington 99352

From: JASA 31 (June 1979): 127.


A statement of Carl Henry's article in the September 1978 issue of the Journal ASA elicits this letter from me. In his article entitled "Christianity and Medical Frontiers," he states, "And many now ask whether scientists who hailed their creation of the bomb as signaling the dawn of a luminous atomic age should not have known and said also that there is no known way to handle atomic waste." He also makes generalizations that are popular in the antitechnology expressions of the day. The facts regarding nuclear waste are similar to those surrounding many of our societal problems of the day; measures for handling these problems exist, but the will to do so is lacking. We who are Christians certainly are aware of our willfulness or lack of will at times of decision.

May I commend the writings of Dr. Margaret Maxey, a Christian ethicist at the University of Detroit, as one who is articulating the issues of the day very clearly. Perhaps she would give you permission to publish some of her writings so that ASA members would be privileged to gain a Christian perspective on the energy picture of the day. A member of ASA, Vie Uotinen, is also writing and working on the subject. For your personal use, I am enclosing copies of some of the articles so that you might be persuaded to keep the ASA from being used for political purposes in contradistinction to its appropriate role of being an instrument of hope, based on the use of truth, both scientific and spiritual.

[Ed. - We look forward to contributions from Dr. Maxey and others in later issues.]