5. Reactors aren't nuclear bombs
The fears of a nuclear explosion in the two to four-megatonne range due to reactor core meltdown, which, it was claimed, would destroy the nearby city of Kiev and make large areas of Europe uninhabitable, turned out to be wrong. Nuclear power stations don't explode like nuclear bombs — and certainly not thermonuclear ones in the megatonne range. In any case, such an explosion wouldn't have destroyed Minsk, nor would it have made Europe uninhabitable.