Dismantling Sellafield: the epic task of shutting down a nuclear site | Nuclear power | The Guardian

The towers are air-cooled graphite-moderated reactors built with the sole purpose of producing material for bombs. 

In 1957 one of them caught fire and the scientists tried to put it out with water and push the fuel rods out using scaffolding pipes then some bright spark had the idea of cutting off the air supply and that finally worked.    They got lucky.  If the air filters that one scientist insisted they put on top of the towers had not stopped the radioactive material from escaping the history of England would have been a lot different.  Farmers had to pour milk away and radiation reached as far as Holland.

I was five at the time and lived 25 miles away as the crow flys.