First results from tritium operation of the VUV survey spectrometer on JET are presented. The instrument, located outside the biological shield and offset from a direct plasma l-o-s for maximum radiation protection, was operational during the Trace Tritium Campaign (TTE) at JET. No discernible increase in detector background noise levels were detected for total neutron rates of up to 1x1017/s, demonstrating the shielding effectiveness of the configuration. Some tritium retention in the detector microchannel plate was measurable. As a reference the unshielded detector of a close-coupled XUV instrument was operated during TTE (the spectrometer itself was valved off from the JET vessel). This was exposed to neutron fluxes of ~ 109/cm2.s, in excess those predicted for the corresponding instrument on ITER (107-108/cm2.s). A corresponding increase in the background level equivalent to ~ 5% of the detector dynamic range was measured.