The robots of Fukushima have 'died' | TechRadar
http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of- ... d--1316742

Not overly surprised. The Russians didn't have much use with robots at Chernoble either.
I do wonder however if modern technology with smaller and smaller process sizes in CPUs etc actually makes things more susceptible to radiation. It's got to be easier to burn out 14 and 22nm pathways with a nice high gamma or neutron flux than it is with older bigger pathways.

Anything sent to space has to be hardened against radiation. The Raspberry Pi in the ISS has a social case made for it. Either the hardware used on Earth has not been shielded adequately. I expect that the necessary shielding would make the robots too heavy to move.

Christ if the robots have died what's it doing to the people and animals?

If it's anything like Chernobyl then the animals will just get on with it although any that get as close to the really hot bits as the robots are likely to have extremely short life spans.
In any case, I gather the bits they were trying to use the robots for were largely underwater so it's unlikely to be terribly accessible to people.
There will probably be some interesting extremeolphile bacteria having a rare old time. There are certainly ones that thrive in nuclear fuel cooling ponds.