Risk mitigation for ITER by a prolonged and joint international operation of JET

Prolonged operation of the Joint European Torus (JET) in a set-up involving all ITER partners will be beneficial for ITER. Experiments at JET with its ITER-like wall and using a D-T plasma mixture will help to mitigate risks in the ITER research plan. Training of the ITER operators, technicians and engineers at JET will save valuable time when ITER comes into operation. Moreover, the way in which the future ITER experiments will be organized can already be experienced at JET, by imposing a similar organisational structure. This paper will present arguments in favour of an extension of JET and additionally briefly discuss a number of enhancements that will make experiments on JET even more relevant for ITER.