Croatia's Science Minister, Blazenka Divjak, who is on an official visit to Madrid from June 19-21, will sign a memorandum of understanding and cooperation between her ministry and Spain's Ministry of Science, on fusion research, the Science Ministry said in a press release on Wednesday.

Minister Divjak is visiting Madrid on the invitation of her Spanish counterpart, Pedro Duque.

The memorandum will formalise cooperation between two countries’ leading science and research institutes – Croatia’s Rudjer Boskovic Institute (IRB) and Spain’s CIEMAT institute, which are both taking part in designing the DEMO-Oriented Neutron Source (DONES).

DONES is a system which will help scientists test materials in an extreme environment of neutron irradiation, similar to that of a demonstration fusion reactor (DEMO). Croatia’s IRB institute will work on radiation protection systems for scientists operating the machine, and will develop its decommissioning strategy.

Spain’s Science Minister Pedro Dueque is an astronautics engineer who flew to space for the first time in 1998 as part of a NASA mission. He is a member of the European Space Agency (ESA) and last time flew to space in 2003, as part of a mission to the International Space Station.

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