The operator of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said it retrieved a small amount of melted fuel from one of the reactors for the first time since a major earthquake and tsunami crippled the nuclear facility in 2011.

According to Japanese media outlets on Thursday, the Tokyo Electric Power Company(TEPCO) employed a telescopic device to collect fuel debris from the containment vessel of the No. 2 reactor.

The sample will be placed in a sealed container and sent for analysis to the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s facility in Ibaraki Prefecture.

The retrieval operation was suspended twice earlier this year, due to worker errors and a glitch that disabled cameras attached to the device.

While Japan plans to complete the decommissioning of the plant by 2051, it remains to be seen how TEPCO will remove all of the estimated 880 tons of fuel debris inside reactors Nos. 1, 2 and 3.