The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Project includes a vigorous safety design and assessment activity to demonstrate the safety potential of ITER and to demonstrate that it can be sited in any of the sponsoring Parties with a minimum of site-specific redesign. The scope and depth of the ITER Engineering Design Activities (EDA) safety effort was unprecedented for fusion. In this paper, we discuss a number of lessons that have been learned during the safety effort of the ITER EDA and their implications for fusion in the longer term.