Correct, not right away and never completely. We'd still need LOTS of oil for plastics and other "byproducts". And yep, majority of our electric is home grown. Has to be. Massive loss whenever you transport juice long distance. Sometimes it makes sense (Niagara Falls) because of location and whatnot.
Electricity is only part of our energy market.
I didn't mean it was generated local, I meant, unlike transportation fuels, even the fuels used for electrical production are domestically produced as we are a net exporter of coal and natural gas, which comprise 70% of our electrical capacity (leaving nuclear at about 20% and hydro and other renewables at 10%)
So even with a full conversion of the grid to nuclear, we would need to import petroleum, unless we switched to synthetics. Now, that process could be dome in stages as the nuclear side ramps up, first Fischer-tropsch to get liquid fuels from natural gas and coal, supplanted by fully synthetic syngas generation from atmospheric co2 and water once the power is available to do so. So during the 10-20 years (minimum) it would take to transition the power plants, we coud ramp up the chemical processes necessary at the same time.
I look at it this way. To fully transform our entire energy system to nuclear and synthetic fuels would cost about $15-20 trillion (3-5 TW average power) over about 20 years. The issue is one of capital and the govt staying out of the way, as the investment (private) is there, but doesn't want to risk putting in the $ if the government part could not only screw it up, but delay it into non-profitability.
Right now we spend close to $2 trillion a year on energy, and most of it isn't capital or transmission infrastructure, most of it is fuels. With the nuclear/synfuel combination, we could not only reduce our energy costs by a factor of two or more, but the export the resources we do have at a huge profit.
