Today in History - October 8: People didn't know for decades why incredible quantity of milk was dumped in the ocean

A fire broke out within a plutonium reactor in the UK on October 8, 1957, triggering the worst nuclear disaster in the country's history.

But it took several days for workers at the Windscale Piles to notice the intense blaze within the facility.

Dousing the fire proved incredibly difficult.

Running the fans at maximum speed only fed the flames further.

And efforts to create a firebreak by shifting undamaged fuel cartridges were ineffective.

Pumping carbon dioxide into the reactor also did not work.

Officials then risked making things worse by pouring water on the eleven tonnes of burning uranium. Doing so could have resulted in a further explosion.

That didn't happen, but it also failed to douse the flames.

Eventually, the workers shut off all air coming into the reactor.

That finally, eventually, caused the fire to die down.

All the while, the reactor had been spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere, spreading across the UK and Europe.

Most exposed to the radiation was reactor manager Tom Tuohy, who had to make repeated climbs up a 24m ladder to survey the damage.

Though being home with the flu, he came in to work to supervise the efforts to stem the blaze.

Because he had taken off his device recording his exposure to radiation, it was unknown just how badly he had been affected.

It was feared this could lead to an early death from radiation poisoning or cancer. But Tuohy ended up living until the age of 90.

The reactor tank has been sealed ever since the accident, still containing tonnes of uranium.

For decades, officials feared shifting that uranium fuel could cause another fire.

But scientists now consider that to be unlikely.

For decades, the true impact of the disaster was kept secret from the British people and the wider world.

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan ordered the report into the fire be heavily censored. It would not be released in full until 1988.

Children born in the nearby town of Seascale were nine times more likely to die of blood cancer than the UK at large.

And another 240 thyroid cancer cases were linked to the disaster.

The area was not evacuated, but all livestock within 800 square kilometres were killed.

Milk from cows from 500 square kilometres around the plant was seized, diluted heavily and dumped into the Irish Sea.

One of the worst nuclear accidents in history, its effects would be dwarfed by the Chernobyl disaster three decades later.

For more from our Today in History archive, click here

DOWNLOAD THE 9NEWS APP: Stay across all the latest in breaking news, sport, politics and the weather via our news app and get notifications sent straight to your smartphone. Available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.