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

Question

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

In: 1404

Answer 1

The International Atomic Energy Agency has a lot of different tools in their toolbox to verify that countries aren’t hiding nuclear activity. One of the most useful is authority to collect environmental samples. They rub a cotton pad over surfaces that collect dust and ship the samples to a lab for analysis. They can tell if there is any uranium or plutonium nearby and how enriched the uranium is from the analysis.