Huemul Project (nonfiction)

The Huemul Project (Spanish: Proyecto Huemul) was an early 1950s Argentine effort to develop a fusion power device known as the Thermotron. The concept was invented by Austrian scientist Ronald Richter (nonfiction), who claimed to have a design that would produce effectively unlimited power.

Richter was able to pitch the idea to president Juan Perón in 1948, and soon received funding to build an experimental site on Huemul Island, just outside the town of San Carlos de Bariloche near the Chilean border. Construction began late in 1949, and by 1951 the site was completed and carrying out tests.

On 16 February 1951, Richter measured high temperatures that suggested fusion had been achieved. On March 24, the day before an important meeting of American leaders, Perón publicly announced that Richter had been successful, and that in the future, energy would be sold in packages the size of a milk bottle.

Worldwide interest followed, along with significant skepticism on the part of other physicists. Little information was forthcoming; no papers were published on the topic, and over the next year a number of reporters visited the site but were denied access to the buildings.

After increasing pressure, Perón arranged for a team to investigate the claims and return individual reports, all of which were negative. A review of these reports was equally negative, and the project was ended in 1952.

Perón was overthrown in 1955, and in the aftermath, Richter was arrested for fraud (nonfiction). He appears to have spent periods of time abroad, including some time in Libya. Eventually he returned to Argentina, where he died in 1991.

Fiction cross-reference

• Fraud
• Huemul Project

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Ronald Richter (nonfiction)