The agreement will allow American companies to participate in India's "rapidly expanding "civil nuclear energy sector, the U.S. State Department said in a statement.

The announcement comes ahead of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's April 12-13 visit to Washington for the Nuclear Security Summit.

"The agreement to make India the third reprocessing partner of the (United States) reflects the special trust and respect that exists between strategic partners," Ron Somers, president of the U.S.-India Business Council, said in a statement. "Today's announcement attests to continuity and bipartisanship in both countries and encourages us that U.S.-India civil nuclear trade is near at hand."

India and the United States are now nearer to implementing the civil nuclear cooperation deal signed in October 2008.

Last week an official from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission said India expects to produce 35,000 megawatts of nuclear power by 2020. India aims to boost its nuclear energy capacity by 12,000 percent by 2050.

While the country's demand for power will have reached 3.5 million to 4 million megawatts by 2020, however, nuclear power is slated to account for less than 10 percent of total demand.

In September, Singh told a conference on peaceful uses of atomic energy in New Delhi, "there will be huge opportunities for the global nuclear industry to participate in the expansion of India's nuclear energy program."

India's nuclear energy market could be worth more than $150 billion in coming years.

"The ultimate goal of ours is, of course, to allow the export of nuclear reactors to India," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake said this month, the Hindu newspaper reports.

He pointed out that up to eight reactors could be located in each of India's two proposed nuclear reactor park sites in the states of Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.

Blake emphasized that the United States was hoping the Indian government would move ahead on legislation regarding nuclear liability.

But on March 15 the Indian government withdrew the introduction of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill 2010, which would limit to about $65 million the compensation that foreign nuclear operators would be liable for in the event of a nuclear accident.

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