As the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers licensing applications for new nuclear generation in 14 states, attempts to overturn explicit or effective bans failed in six other states in 2009, according to the nonprofit Nuclear Information and Resource Service.

"Things will be even tougher for their state lobbyists in 2010 now that the freeze on Yucca Mountain has taken long-term waste disposal off the table," said NIRS Executive Director Michael Mariotte.

The last new nuclear power generation unit to be ordered in the U.S. was in 1978, just before the partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979.

Since that time, first California and then about a dozen states passed laws that outright or effectively banned new nuclear generation.

West Virginia's law is titled a ban in the state code, but functions as an effective ban -- that is, it sets conditions that could, in theory, be met.

Less difficult conditions in the 1996 Ban on Construction of Nuclear Power Plants, include economic feasibility for ratepayers and compliance with environmental laws.

More difficult is the provision about waste.

The code requires at least 24 months' prior operation of a national facility "which safely, successfully and permanently disposes of any and all radioactive wastes associated with operating any such nuclear power plant, nuclear factory or nuclear electric power generating plant."

That condition has never been met.

And because the federal government withdrew its support for the Yucca Mountain facility earlier this year, there is no process in place for it ever to be met.

Senate Bill 240, introduced in West Virginia's 2009 regular legislative session, aimed to repeal the ban on nuclear generation in the state.

Lead sponsor Sen. Brooks McCabe, D-Kanawha, was unavailable for this story, but co-sponsor Sen. Dan Foster, D-Kanawha, explained his support for the repeal.

"I feel that we have to look at every conceivable alternative of energy generation," Foster said.

"The big problem has been how you dispose of the waste, and the new plants are able to reutilize as fuel much of what used to be considered waste," he said.

"The plants that would be built 10,15, 20 years from now in the state, my guess is that the technology would be vastly different from what it was, and the waste issue would be different. I don't see that there's a need for (a national storage facility) in the future."

Fellow SB 240 co-sponsor Sen. Don Caruth, R-Mercer, still would like to see a storage solution, "preferably in some place outside of West Virginia."

But he, too, wants an open discussion of all possible energy sources.

"As the cost of energy, the cost of heating your home or the cost of energy as a factor of operating your business, increases, people are going to become, I think, more interested on a personal basis or on a business basis in what we can do to defray those costs," Caruth said.

"So I don't think it's radical for us in the Legislature to begin to attempt to study all of those different possibilities."

Caruth added that he is an advocate for coal and gas and opposes a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases and other policy measures that would reduce the use of fossil fuels.

Also in the Legislature in 2009, nuclear energy was included in, and then removed from, the state's alternative and renewable energy portfolio standard as an "alternative energy resource."

That standard went into effect July 1 without the inclusion of nuclear energy.

According to the NIRS, attempts to overturn nuclear bans failed in five other states in 2009: Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

But Foster does not see SB 240 as having failed. He said the bill was introduced mainly to provoke committee discussion about nuclear power, and he feels it fulfilled that purpose.

And he said he would support any future attempt to repeal West Virginia's ban.