I got the idea for this watching a lot of Chernobyl Family. Typing "soviet control room" into google gives a lot of cool pictures, usually with a giant depiction of the core in the center of the room.

The Soviets had to smuggle in Intel and IBM tech during the cold war, so no one had access to good computers, except at work. I imagined a bored engineer at Chernobyl Nuclear power plant with the most powerful computer in Russia behind him, SKALA. He modifies the computer control program so it is more fun to play. He sets off larger and larger chain reactions while still keeping the reactor sub-critical, until one day, meltdown. Years later, he sneaks back into the rubble, steals the control code and publishes it as an internationally popular video game, called Reaktor.