Sir

Michael Chen, in Correspondence (Nature 442, 132; 200610.1038/441132a), raised a question about the colours used in a map with the News Feature “Forward planning” (Nature 440, 987–989; 2006). He was concerned that showing both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan as yellow would make people think that they comprised one country. However, all the countries shown as having proposed repositories for nuclear waste are coloured yellow, including Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom and France. This certainly does not mean that these pairs of neighbouring countries have been united into one.

According to the World Nuclear Association (http://www.world-nuclear.org), Taiwan has nuclear power reactors in operation, and therefore it should not be excluded from the issue discussed in the News Feature. I can see nothing wrong with the colours used in the map. Being simple and focused, it fulfilled its purpose.