Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd and French utility Areva SA are preparing to place a bid for an upcoming order to build a nuclear power plant in Turkey, a Turkish government official recently told the Nikkei.

Mitsubishi Heavy and Areva plan to sell the Atmea 1, a midsize nuclear reactor the two sides have jointly developed, through negotiations between the Japanese and Turkish governments, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

The bid for the NPP to be built in Turkey's Black Sea city of Sinop will be the French-Japanese alliance's second attempt to export nuclear reactors to a country in the Middle East, following the successful sale of reactors in Jordan.

Prior to the March 2011 nuclear accident in Japan, Toshiba Corp. was part of a separate consortium that tried to sell reactors in Turkey.

However, those negotiations ground to a halt when Tokyo Electric Power Co. quit the consortium in the wake of the nuclear crisis.

Firms from other countries, including China, South Korea and Canada, are also bidding for the project in Turkey.