TOKYO >> A remote-controlled robot has safely returned with a tiny piece of melted fuel it collected from inside one of three damaged reactors at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant for the first time since the 2011 meltdown.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, which manages the plant, said Saturday that the extendable fishing rod-like robot successfully clipped a piece of gravel of about 0.2 inches, the size of a tiny bit of granola, from the top surface of a mound of molten fuel debris that sits on the bottom of the No. 2 reactor’s primary containment vessel.

The “telesco” robot, with its frontal tongs still holding the melted fuel bit, returned to the enclosed container for safe storage after workers in full hazmat gear pulled it out of the containment vessel earlier Saturday.

The sample return marks the first time the melted fuel is retrieved out of the containment vessel. But the mission is not over until it’s certain that the sample’s radioactivity is below a set standard and safely placed into a container.