The US is set to import roughly 19 cylinders’ worth of Russian enriched uranium product (EUP) from France for fabrication into fuel assemblies and reexport to Japanese utility Tohoku Electric. While Japan has some fuel fabrication capacity, a number of Japanese utilities have long relied on imports to fill the gap. Russian nuclear fuel company Tenex was initially intended to deliver the EUP to the US for fabrication and reexport roughly a decade ago, but due to complications after the Fukushima Daichii nuclear disaster, the material never made it to the US. Almost exactly 15 years after Fukushima, the pace of Japanese reactor restarts is accelerating, and some Japanese utilities are just now restarting fuel fabrication and procurement.