Ronald Richter

According to his recollection, Santos Mayo had personally heard Richard Gans say: Richter proposed a thesis, at the German University of Prague, to detect "delta rays" emitted from Earth.

He recalled: ...when I was Prof. Furth's assistant in the Department of Experimental Physics [of Prague University], [Richter] came to interest us in a fantastic project.

Richter discovered that the injection of heavy hydrogen (deuterium) caused a nuclear reaction which he could measure and gauge with Geiger counters.

[7] On the recommendation of Kurt Tank in 1947, Richter was invited to Argentina to develop a nuclear program for General Juan Perón.

He learned that a German fusion reactor had been smuggled to Argentina and Perón desperately needed an expert able to bring the device back to life.

Perón's reasons for backing Richter were in line with the ideology of modernization underlying his concept of the "New Argentina"; he was not interested in the military applications of atomic energy, but saw it as a way to expand iron and steel production.

[11] In 1951 Richter announced that he had achieved controlled nuclear fusion under laboratory conditions, a claim later proven false: it transpired that Richer had simply exploded hydrogen in an electric arc.

The committee analyzed Richter's work and concluded that the actual temperature reached in his experiments was far too low to produce a true thermonuclear reaction.

[12] On 24 March 1951 Perón announced to the international press "Argentina Produces Atomic Energy", and later decorated Richter with the Peronista Medal.

Secret British government documents declassified under the 30-year rule in 1983 report that Perón had contemplated invading the Falkland Islands in 1951, possibly due to his confidence that Argentina would be the first country to exploit atomic energy for industrial purposes.

The doubters discreetly sought the advice of scientists from advanced countries – a risky move because of Perón's initial blind support of Richter.... Perón startled the world with his announcement that "the Argentine scientist Richter" – who couldn't speak a word of Spanish – had achieved the controlled release of nuclear-fusion energy.

The plot develops poetically framed between the ever-present Patagonian winds of the roaring forties and the recurrent breaking of the waves of the lake on the shores of the island... until the peace is shattered by German utterances and acoustic bangs.