how nuclear inspectors can inspect other countries nuclear weapon inventories and uranium refining abilities in a way that can be trusted and not just staged by the inspected country
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Enrichment facilities are huge, they use very specialized equipment, and they consume a lot of power. Inspectors use all three of those factors to figure out when a country might be trying to hide weapon production.
First, if you build a factory big enough to house a uranium processing plant, a bunch of satellites are going to see it, so inspectors are going to want to look at it. Second, you’re going to have to buy some really big, really strong gas centrifuges, and those are only really used for one thing. Only a few companies make them, and while it’s fine for a country to buy them, they’re going to be tracked all the way from purchase to installation. If they’re set up one way, they’ll produce uranium that’s good enough for reactors, and that’s fine. If they’re set up another way, they’ll produce weapons-grade material, and that’s not. Changing from one configuration to the other will take a long time, so you can’t really switch them on inspection day. Finally, the Manhattan Project used a significant portion (I’ve heard as much as 10%) of the power generated in the entire Untied States at the time. That’s a LOT of power. Experts can make a pretty good estimate of your country’s power use, and power production, and if those numbers don’t match, they’ll know something’s up. Satellites will then look for unexplained power lines and heat sources, and inspectors will want to have a look at those places.
Plutonium production is harder to hide, because your reactors are either set up to make plutonium, or they aren’t. If they are, you’re almost certainly making it for weapons, because it has almost no other practical use.
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