Frontier Science

YOUR editorial on Disregard of Economics (May 12) raises very relevant questions for scientists. But I am writing this not in defence of the alleged disregard of economics in the proposal to expand nuclear power capacity tenfold in the next 15-16 years. One could argue, however, that whatever expansion in nuclear power capacity is proposed is not at the expense of energy expansion through other routes, namely, coal and energy-effi-ciency. Incidentally, China too has similar nuclear power plans. I wish to raise a larger issue with the economists.