Not really, not with the will and the commitment.
This is one of my pet peeves.Neither party is addressing the energy future in a realistic way.
In order to remain a high-energy consumption society, we need 1000-3000 nuclear power stations right away. People who plan on keeping their energy lifestyle should be clamoring for those plants to be built.
The alternative is not extending daylighht savings time by two weeks, which is what Congress seems to think is an energy policy. The alternative is to become a low-energy consumption society.
The Democrats, who favor this approach, should say that if they get elected, they will ban six and eight cylinder engines, not allow thermostats to work over 66F for heat or under 82F for cool, and all the other things which are needed to get us to where they want to take us.
"In order to remain a high-energy consumption society, we need 1000-3000 nuclear power stations right away. People who plan on keeping their energy lifestyle should be clamoring for those plants to be built."
I agree with the jist of what you say.
In another FR thread, I expressed the view that our energy deficit, energy independent, global warming issues, and the need to go to a post-fossil-fuel economy if and when oil gets scarce can ALL be solved quite simply: Build nuclear power plants to generate 85+% of our electricity (the rest can be done with wind, hydro, natgas, coal, solar, as peak demand sources)
I opined that we would need 500 nuclear power plants (with 100 power plants today we get about 20% of our needs met). Someone corrected me and noted we could build large amounts of capacity on existing sites, so even 500 might not be needed. This is a good point. It's not the number of plants, but the overall capacity that is the issue.
We could and we should try to get 85% of our electricity generation satisfied by nuclear power, and we should do it as soon as practicable. That would still take 20-30 years, as older plants are phased out.
A report says that "U.S. energy consumption is projected to reach 127 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2020"
Most of that is satisfied with fossil fuels, most of the energy issues have to do with the downsides of fossil fuels. So lets obviate them by going beyond fossil fuels.
If we simply commit to increasing the nuclear power generation levels by 20% per year, then over time we would reach the level of nuclear power capacity needed to meet the goal. 20% per year means building 20 nuke plants per year, or 400 in the next 20 years. This is doable with the will and commitment as you say.
We should not worry about low- or high-energy consumption per se. It eventually boils down to economics - can we afford to do it long term. We should worry about getting the maximum leverage out of the energy we use (efficiency), and finding a way to obtain energy from internal resources and not depend on imports.
Nuclear power generation + electric cars will be the way to go.