> The Japanese have a cultural fascination with humanoid robots.

If you are talking about pop culture, yes. However, non-humanoids don't make news as they have already been part of Japanese culture. Even kids know cars, toys, foods etc are made by robots.

As Estragon pointed out, Japan doesn't have robots suitable for such condition as it didn't have urgent necessity.

In addition, the Fukushima power plants are very old and I think it was not designed for inspection and repair by robots.