Ruins of "Proyecto Huemul"

The Huemul Project 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, who claimed to have a design that would produce effectively unlimited power.

Richter was able to pitch the idea to President of Argentina Juan Perón in 1948, and soon received massive funding to build an experimental site on Huemul Island, on a lake just outside the town of San Carlos de Bariloche in Patagonia, near the Andes mountains. 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.