More than 13 years after an earthquake-turned-tsunami triggered the second-largest nuclear accident in global history, a robot has snagged a piece of melted fuel from the fatally radioactive Fukushima reactor.

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) has extracted the first sample of nuclear fuel debris from the containment vessel

The mission is not over until the sample's radioactivity is below a set standard and safely placed into a container

Small sample to aid in planning the safe decommissioning of the nuclear plant, which contains an estimated 880 tons of highly radioactive molten fuel

This is the first physical extraction of melted fuel from within the reactor containment vessel, a milestone in the challenging decommissioning process of the damaged Fukushima plant

The operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant said it retrieved a tiny amount of melted fuel from one of the reactors that went into a triple meltdown following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex said Saturday it moved a tiny portion of melted fuel just outside a reactor container as part of its attempt to retrieve the debris for the first time since a nuclear disaster hit the plant over a decade ago.

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) plans to resume work to remove a sample of highly radioactive material from

The operator of Japan's Fukushima nuclear complex said it has moved a "pebble-like" piece of melted fuel just outside a reactor container as part of its attempt to retrieve the radioactive debris for the first time since the plant was damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

The sample was collected from a mound of molten fuel debris from the base of Fukushima's reactor number 2's primary containment vessel. The fuel sample was then transferred to an enclosed container after retrieval by workers in full HAZMAT gear.