Remote handling operation has been carried out on the Joint European Torus for over 16 years with in excess of over 21,500 hours of in-vessel remote handling activities. During this period the operations team has developed to provide the unique skills required to achieve the demanding remote operational campaigns undertaken today. This paper describes the challenges experienced in recruiting, training and retaining the remote handling system operators and examines the evolution of the team profiles currently used. The operations team have a number of key skills that vary depending on the role of the team member. A degree of overlap in skills is essential to ensure that operations can continue with the temporary loss of an operator. The remote handling system at JET utilises two Articulated Booms. A 12.5 metre boom is fitted with a force reflecting servo manipulator (MASCOT) and a 9.4 metre boom is used to transport tooling and components to and from the work area. MASCOT is a two armed master slave system; each arm has 7 degrees of freedom with the capability to carry a mass of up to 20kg. The content of this paper documents the development of the JET remote operations team over the past 16 years, and should provide a resource of value for future tokamak remote handling operations such as ITER and DEMO.

Preprint of Paper to be submitted for publication in Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Fusion Nuclear Technology, Barcelona, Spain 16th September 2013 - 20th September 2013