Color Balance crashes Premiere Pro the minute I apply to any clip

As Ann correctly notes, CB is an "obsolete" effect, meaning ... it's old code, hasn't been updated since around 2017 at the latest, and most of those that affect color had math my colorist buds considered suspect at the least. If not plain ... um ... not good.

They aren't ever going to be updated (mostly for good reasons), there are newer and better performing options, and are already completely gone on the Mac silicon computers. I'm surprised they're availble on PCs.

I teach color to pro colorists. I would NEVER ever use or teach any of those like Fast Color or Color Balance.

Your mileage will vary, of course. But ... choose wisely ...

as Neil suggested, we need more info to help you, but

there are known crash issues:

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/kb/known-issues.html

FYI color balance is an obsolete effect.

Your data is lacking details.

OS/CPU/RAM/GPU, GPU driver.

The media involved and what created it.

Any other effects used on that sequence.

And does the Color Workspace Lumetri panel work or not?