The Huemul Project was a secret project proposed by the German scientist of Austrian origin Ronald Richter to the government of Argentina during the first presidency of Juan Domingo Perón. In 1948, Richter convinced Perón that he could produce nuclear fusion energy before any other country based in a lithium-deuterium nuclear reaction. The present state of the art in fusion research is for example, the US$12 billion ITER multinational project, which uses a tokamak-like configuration to reach and maintain the high temperatures and plasma densities needed for fusion (Lawson criterion, 1957). The initial temperatures achieved by Richter's device were orders of magnitude lower, and too low for producing fusion events at a rate high enough to obtain higher temperatures. Ronald Richter (1909-1991) was an Austrian, later Argentinian, scientist who became famous in connection with the Huemul Project and the Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. ... Current President Néstor Kirchner The President of Argentina (full title: President of the Argentine Nation, Spanish: Presidente de la Nación Argentina) is the head of state of Argentina. ... Juan Domingo Perón (October 8, 1895 – July 1, 1974) was an Argentine military officer and the President of Argentina from 1946 to 1955 and from 1973 to 1974. ... The deuterium-tritium (D-T) fusion reaction is considered the most promising for producing fusion power. ... General Name, Symbol, Number lithium, Li, 3 Chemical series alkali metals Group, Period, Block 1, 2, s Appearance silvery white/gray Atomic mass 6. ... Deuterium, also called heavy hydrogen, is a stable isotope of hydrogen with a natural abundance in the oceans of one atom in 6400 of hydrogen (see VSMOW; the abundance changes slightly from one kind of natural water to another). ... The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. ... Cutaway of the ITER Tokamak Torus in casing. ... A split image of the largest tokamak in the world, the JET, showing hot plasma in the right image during a shot. ... In nuclear fusion research, the Lawson criterion, first derived by John D. Lawson in 1957, is an important general measure of a system that defines the conditions needed for a fusion reactor to reach ignition, that is, that the heating of the plasma by the products of the fusion reactions...

Already during World War II German scientists under Walther Gerlach and Kurt Diebner carried out large experiments to explore the possibility to induce thermonuclear reactions in deuterium with high explosive-driven convergent shock waves, following Guderley's famous convergent shock wave solution. At the same time Richter proposed in a memorandum to German government officials to induce nuclear fusion reactions through shock waves by high-velocity particles shot in a highly compressed deuterium plasma contained in an ordinary uranium vessel. The proposal was not carried through. References regarding these claims can be found in the book by Rainer Karlsch entitled "Hitler's Bomb" (DVA, Germany, 2005). This article is becoming very long. ... Walther Gerlach (1 August 1889 - 10 August 1979) was a German physicist. ... Prof. ... At the end of the 20th century, Thermonuclear has came to imply anything which has to do with fusion nuclear reactions which are triggered by particles of thermal energy. ... Deuterium, also called heavy hydrogen, is a stable isotope of hydrogen with a natural abundance in the oceans of one atom in 6400 of hydrogen (see VSMOW; the abundance changes slightly from one kind of natural water to another). ... Introduction The shock wave is one of several different ways in which a gas in a supersonic flow can be compressed. ... A Plasma lamp, illustrating some of the more complex phenomena of a plasma, including filamentation A solar coronal mass ejection blasts plasma throughout the solar system. ... General Name, Symbol, Number uranium, U, 92 Chemical series actinides Group, Period, Block n/a, 7, f Appearance silvery gray metallic; corrodes to a spalling black oxide coat in air Atomic mass 238. ... Rainer Karlsch (b. ... Hitler’s Bomb (Hitlers Bombe) is a nonfictional book concerning evidence for a possible atomic weapons test in Nazi Germany. ...

Late in 1949 construction of the laboratories in Huemul Island (Isla Huemul in the Nahuel Huapi Lake), was initiated. In March 1951 Richter informed Perón that the experiments had been successful and the government announced on March 24, 1951: This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Lake Nahuel Huapi from space (the elongate, dark feature in the center of the image is the lake and in the bottom is seen the Limay River), North is to the right of the image, January 1997 Nahuel Huapi Lake (Spanish: Lago Nahuel Huapi) is a lake of the lake... March 24 is the 83rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (84th in leap years). ... 1951 (MCMLI) was a common year starting on Monday; see its calendar. ...

"On February 16, 1951, in the... Isla Huemul... thermonuclear reactions under controlled conditions were performed on a technical scale."

Richter's claim to have achieved fusion was wrong. It is hard at present to analyze his ideas because he never published them in the peer reviewed literature. In other failed attempts, such as was the later, British claim that fusion had been achieved with the Zeta device, the published results could be used for further progress. The subsequent worldwide race over controlled fusion research was in part triggered by these press announcements. The generation of excess energy by controlled fusion is still an open problem. The Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. ... Timeline of significant events in the study and use of nuclear fusion: 1929 - Atkinson and Houtermans used the measured masses of light elements and applied Einsteins discovery that E=mc² to predict that large amounts of energy could be released by fusing small nuclei together. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

After the announcement, and because of delay's in Richter's work to pass from the 'technical scale' to the 'industrial scale' a group of Argentine scientists was appointed to study the merit of the project. This group, including physicist José Antonio Balseiro and engineer Mario Bancora, concluded that Richter's claims were unfounded. Balseiro's calculations and Bancora's analysis of the experiment, convinced government officials that this method of attaining fusion was unsuitable. The first few hydrogen atom electron orbitals shown as cross-sections with color-coded probability density. ... José Antonio Balseiro (born March 29, 1919 in Córdoba - died March 26, 1962 in Bariloche) was an important Argentine physicist. ...

The government appointed physicists Richard Gans and Antonio Rodríguez to review the response by Richter to the report of the first commission. This second group of experts endorsed the findings of the first review panel and found Richter's response inadequate. In view of these findings, the Huemul Project was closed in 1952. Richter had grossly underestimated the technical difficulties of achieving controlled fusion and had erroneously interpreted the results of his experiments. The first few hydrogen atom electron orbitals shown as cross-sections with color-coded probability density. ... Richard Martin Gans, physicist born in Germany, founded the Physics Institute of the National University of La Plata, Argentina, and was its Director from the late 1940s through the mid-1950s. ...

In 1948 Argentina was in a good economic position, following a large trade surplus after WW II, so economic resources were available for the Huemul Project. The amount spent is precisely known thanks to a report written by Dr. Teófilo Isnardi et. al., published in 1958. After the fall of Perón's government in September 1955, opponents to Perón painted a value for the budget of the project in a wall of Richter's Laboratory No. 4 (a photograph can be seen in Mariscotti's book, see references) claiming that the total expenses were 62 million pesos (the amount stated in Isnardi's report), which at that time represented approximately US$7 million, or about 140 times the amount allocated by the U.S. government soon after the Argentine announcement (Project Matterhorn, under Lyman Spitzer). A recent estimate has been published by M. Cardona et. al., in their biography of Falicov (see references). They state that the total cost of the project was equivalent to US$300 million at values of 2003. The Revolución Libertadora (Spanish, Liberating Revolution) was a military uprising that ended the second presidential term of Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina, in 1955. ... The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. ... Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory for plasma physics and nuclear fusion science. ... Lyman Spitzer Lyman Spitzer, Jr. ... The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. ...

This amount is small compared to the expenditures made by other nations in later efforts, but it is significant because it credits Argentina as the first country to give official support to a nuclear fusion program for peaceful purposes.

Today, the Huemul island with the ruins of the historic facilities (at 41°06′23″S, 71°23′42″W), can be visited by tourists. It is reached by boat from the port of Bariloche. San Carlos de Bariloche is a city in the province of Río Negro, Argentina, situated on the foothills of the Andes, surrounded by lakes (Nahuel Huapi, Gutiérrez Lake, Moreno Lake and Mascardi Lake) and mountains (Tronador, Cerro Catedral, Cerro López). ...

References

• Guderley, G., 1942, Luftfahrforschung 19, 302.
• Mariscotti, Mario, 1985, El Secreto Atómico de Huemul: Crónica del Origen de la Energía Atómica en la Argentina, Sudamericana/Planeta, Buenos Aires, Argentina ISBN 950-37-0109-0
• Mariscotti, Mario. El secreto atómico de Huemul, 3. ed. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Estudio Sigma, c1996. 286 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. ISBN 950-9446-24-6
• Mariscotti, M., 2004, El secreto Atómico de Huemul, Ed. Estudio Sigma, Buenos Aires.
• Falicov's biography National Academy of Sciences: Biographical Memoirs, VOL 83, 2003, THE NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
• López Dávalos A. , Badino N., 2000 J. A. Balseiro: Crónica de una ilusión, Fondo de Cultura Económica de Argentina, ISBN 950-557-357-X.

External links

• Reports of Balseiro and Bancora (1952) in English.
• Balseiro's Report (1952) PDF - Spanish
• Bancora's Report(1952)- Spanish]
• López Dávalos, Arturo y Badino, Norma (1988). Antecedentes Históricos del Instituto Balseiro - Spanish
• Horacio Luis Varela: Litio: Materia Prima para la Tecnología de la Fusión Termonuclear (1997) Spanish
• Mic. Ramón Regés: Proyecto Huemul (1999) Spanish
• Guillermo Giménez de Castro: La quimera atómica de Richter (2004) Spanish

From Physics Today

• Juan G. Roederer. Article (2003)
• More on the Value of Ronald Richter's Work
• Santos Mayo, Friedwardt Winterberg. Letters (2004)
• Javier Luzuriaga. Letter (2005)