A method for computing the stress-energy tensor for the quantized, massless, spin 1 2 field in a general static spherically symmetric spacetime is presented. The field can be in a zero temperature state or a non-zero temperature thermal state. An expression for the full renormalized stress-energy tensor is derived. It consists of a sum of two tensors both of which are conserved. One tensor is written in terms of the modes of the quantized field and has zero trace. In most cases it must be computed numerically. The other tensor does not explicitly depend on the modes and has a trace equal to the trace anomaly. It can be used as an analytic approximation for the stress-energy tensor and is equivalent to other approximations that have been made for the stress-energy tensor of the massless spin 1 2 field in static spherically symmetric spacetimes.

The stress-energy tensor for the massless spin 1/2 field is numerically computed outside and on the event horizons of both charged and uncharged static nonrotating black holes, corresponding to the Schwarzschild, Reissner-Nordström, and extreme Reissner-Nordström solutions of Einstein's equations. The field is assumed to be in a thermal state at the black hole temperature. Comparison is made between the numerical results and previous analytic approximations for the stress-energy tensor in these spacetimes. For the Schwarzschild (charge zero) solution, it is shown that the stress energy differs even in sign from the analytic approximation. For the Reissner-Nordström and extreme Reissner-Nordström solutions, divergences predicted by the analytic approximations are shown not to exist.