The mail.(Letter to the editor)

Robert Zubrin's article (March) was wonderful. I especially appreciated that he pointed out the fallacy of the hydrogen fuel economy. In my daily work as a science journalist, that's been a hard one to get through people's heads.

Larry O'Hanlon

Albuquerque, New Mexico

As a scientist myself, I'm generally an admirer of Dr. Zubrin's professional work. And I commend Zubrin for dispelling the hydrogen economy myth in "An Energy Revolution"

His piece, however, missed one serious point. While he makes clear that hydrogen is an energy carrier only, ethanol is not a great energy source either.

The amount of energy required to produce ethanol is enough that you could not use ethanol to make ethanol. You would consume more ethanol in your tractor, as it were, than you'd get back in energy production. Since making a gallon of corn ethanol from start to finish requires infusions of energy from coal, nuclear, or oil sources, ethanol remains a deficit fuel.

One solution to this would be to create nuclear plants that solely power ethanol refineries. If we did that, we would reduce the pump price of liquid fuels in America to a level the nation hasn't seen in years.