The sun is a giant fusion reactor known to cause cancer on a good day, and emit radiation bursts that can damage or disrupt power grids often enough that people can reasonably expect to read reports of them more than once in their lifetimes.
Even then. The sun is always a big ball of dangerous radiation, even despite things like the ozone layer. A nuclear rocket taking off isn't something you want to be near, but even literal Chernobyl wasn't as deadly in total as skin cancer was just in the year the reactor exploded.