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Huemul Project

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The Huemul Project was a secret advanced project proposed by the Austrian scientist of German 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 (at that time Argentina was among the wealthiest countries in the world). The present state of the art in fusion research is for example, the ITER multinational project, which uses a tokamak-like configuration and is the result of decades of research and development, far removed from Richter's simple but flawed original device.

Already during World War II following Guderley's famous convergent shock wave solution, German scientists under Kurt Diebner and Walther Gerlach carried out large experiments to explore the possibility to induce thermonuclear reactions in deuterium with high explosive-driven convergent shock waves. 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 ordinary uranium containing deuterium plasma. References regarding these claims can be found in the book by Rainer Karlsch entitled "Hitler's Bomb" (DVA, Germany, 2005). On the other hand, according to Mariscotti's account, Richter worked during the war as a collaborator of Manfred von Ardenne's laboratory, in a separate private lab of his own, and his work on fusion was never published in the peer reviewed literature. In Argentina Richter experimented with the acoustic heating of high temperature arcs.

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:

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

Although the Argentine claim to have achieved fusion was wrong, the subsequent worldwide race over controlled fusion research was influenced to some extent by this press announcement

Richter's erratic behavior after the announcement, and the delays in passing from the "technical scale" to the industrial scale promised by Richter, persuaded some officials in Perón's government to insist on a re-evaluation of the project. Finally, a group of Argentine scientists was appointed to study the scientific merit of the project. This group, led by physicist José Antonio Balseiro, concluded that Richter's claims were unsustainable. Richter experimented with the acoustic heating of high temperature arcs, but Balseiro's calculations, and the analysis of his apparatus by Báncora (another member of the commission) made a strong case against the suitability of this method of attaining fusion. A second independent Commission endorsed the conclusions of the first one, and the 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 amount of resources spent on the Huemul project are 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 7 million USD, 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 300 million USD at current values (of 2003). 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 / 41.10639°S 71.39500°W / -41.10639; -71.39500), can be visited by tourists. It is reached by boat from the port of Bariloche.

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: 9503701090
  • Mariscotti, Mario. El secreto atómico de Huemul, 3. ed. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Estudio Sigma, c1996. 286 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. ISBN: 9509446246
  • 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.

External links

From Physics Today

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