The process involves the fusion, at high temperature, of deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen occurring naturally in sea water) with tritium (an isotope of hydrogen occurring naturally in some rocks, but which can be ''bred'' from lithium in the fusion reaction), and the waste product is helium, available in novelty shops to blow up balloons. Our plasma scientists need the funding to get involved so we can keep up with the rest of the world.

B. Woodman, Greenway

Coalition of doubters

THE FEDERAL Coalition under John Howard was a climate change sceptic.

The Federal Coalition under Malcolm Turnbull is stimulus package sceptic.

Soon the Federal Coalition will be termed a coalition of the sceptics?

Sankar Kumar Chatterjee, Evatt Niggles on nutrition

AMONG many routine observations, the Preventative Health Taskforce did finally acknowledge that carbohydrates (as sugar in soft drinks) boost obesity and may usefully warrant taxation as junk food (''Health tonic: tax or ban cigs, alcohol, fat'', September 2, p3).

Hitherto nutritionists' conventional wisdom in the West has focused almost exclusively on fat a wisdom that presided ineffectually over our massive and growing obesity/diabetes epidemic.

But finally noticing that carbs make people fat raises more policy problems. What exactly is junk food? If we target soft drinks, surely we need to attack potatoes too.

Sure, Professor Jennie Brand-Miller estimates Coca-Cola to have a GI of 53, with 26g of available carbohydrates per 250ml serve.

But she also observes that a mere 150g of spuds, eaten in any form, has a much higher and therefore more damaging GI, together with similar carbohydrate content.

Tom Waring, Ainslie

Breathing clean air

JACK WATERFORD has quit smoking (Times2, September 3, p2) . Congrat ... oops! No congratulations least his self-confessed contrariness prompts him to relapse. Waterford's sincere recall of his journey with tobacco is proof enough that any loss of a previous link (by his own account) between cigarettes and creative thought processes hasn't diminished his ability to communicate effectively.

Jorge Gapella, Kaleen

Reversal on refugees

WHEN THE media questioned claims that children were thrown overboard from the Tampa under the Howard government, an outcry led by the Labor opposition forced public disclosure of the government investigation.

However, recent allegations that boat people have been treated inhumanely when trying to scramble onboard Australian rescue craft under a Labor Government are being covered up by a bureaucratic smokescreen, under the guise of an ongoing investigation which is stamped confidential.

To avoid damaging political fallout, the Government is stringing the investigation out as long as possible in the hope that public interest will die down if it goes on long enough.

This should be a piece of cake for a master bureaucrat Prime Minister who knows the workings of the government bureaucracy inside out.

With a change of government has come a new government strategy on how to gain political advantage, or minimise government damage, in the treatment of boat people on the high seas trying to reach Australian shores.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

John Bell, Lyneham

Insanity continues

''THE WAR that came right to our door'' (August 30, p27) only did so more than two years after Australia willingly entered it.

Doug Conway's analysis is rather shallow and arguably flawed.

Australia entered the war on the side of its colonial master, in 1939. Would Japan ever have attacked Australia if that decision had not been made?

With hindsight, Australia's decision was honourable, as the atrocities committed on civilians by Germany and its allies demonstrated that those regimes needed to be toppled.

But it would be interesting to hear Australia's reasons for entering the war in the first place, rather than post hoc rationalisation by reference to events that took place or were revealed much later.

Sadly, Australia has continued to blindly follow Britain in numerous conflicts, which were arguably irrelevant to its interests.

Australia has yet to fight a defensive war, but has taken part in numerous invasions, offensive wars and clandestine campaigns.

Peter Marshall, Captains Flat, NSW