{"id":196078,"date":"2025-10-07T20:58:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T20:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/196078\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T20:58:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T20:58:09","slug":"today-in-history-october-8-people-didnt-know-for-decades-why-incredible-quantity-of-milk-was-dumped-in-the-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/196078\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in History – October 8: People didn’t know for decades why incredible quantity of milk was dumped in the ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

But it took several days for workers at the Windscale Piles to notice the intense blaze within the facility.<\/p>\n

Dousing the fire proved incredibly difficult.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Windscale Piles was a state-of-the-art nuclear facility when it was built in the 1950s. (Nine Archives)<\/p>\n

Running the fans at maximum speed only fed the flames further.<\/p>\n

And efforts to create a firebreak by shifting undamaged fuel cartridges were ineffective.<\/p>\n

Pumping carbon dioxide into the reactor also did not work.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

That didn’t happen, but it also failed to douse the flames.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the workers shut off all air coming into the reactor.<\/p>\n

That finally, eventually, caused the fire to die down.<\/p>\n

All the while, the reactor had been spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere, spreading across the UK and Europe.<\/p>\n

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

\"AA diagram released at the time showed efforts to put out the fire. (Nine Archives)<\/p>\n

Though being home with the flu, he came in to work to supervise the efforts to stem the blaze.<\/p>\n

Because he had taken off his device recording his exposure to radiation, it was unknown just how badly he had been affected.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The reactor tank has been sealed ever since the accident, still containing tonnes of uranium.<\/p>\n

For decades, officials feared shifting that uranium fuel could cause another fire.<\/p>\n

But scientists now consider that to be unlikely.<\/p>\n

For decades, the true impact of the disaster was kept secret from the British people and the wider world.<\/p>\n

\"LocalsLocals around the facility weren’t evacuated during the fire. (Nine Archives)<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan ordered the report into the fire be heavily censored. It would not be released in full until 1988.<\/p>\n

Children born in the nearby town of Seascale were nine times more likely to die of blood cancer than the UK at large.<\/p>\n

And another 240 thyroid cancer cases were linked to the disaster.<\/p>\n

The area was not evacuated, but all livestock within 800 square kilometres were killed.<\/p>\n

Milk from cows from 500 square kilometres around the plant was seized, diluted heavily and dumped into the Irish Sea.<\/p>\n

One of the worst nuclear accidents in history, its effects would be dwarfed by the Chernobyl disaster three decades later.<\/p>\n

\"MilkMilk is tipped away in anticipation of it being dumped into the ocean. (Nine Archives)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fire broke out within a plutonium reactor in the UK on October 8, 1957, triggering the worst…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-196078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}