IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) - Residents are wary of a Department of Energy plan to start producing plutonium-238 at the Idaho National Laboratory.

"Aren't you giving Idaho the dirty part of it?" Paul Bacca asked energy department representatives this week at the first of seven public meetings to be held on the matter in Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, Tennessee and Washington, D.C.

The batteries that use plutonium-238 to power space travel are already assembled in Idaho, at Argonne-West. But production and isolation of the nuclear fuel is currently done at laboratories in South Carolina, Tennessee and New Mexico.

The Department of Energy wants to consolidate the operations in Idaho to save on costs and eliminate security issues involved in transporting nuclear power across roughly 8,000 miles.

But Bacca, a former Argonne National Laboratory-West worker who researched plutonium, questioned the benefit on contaminating another building when the facility that the energy department now uses will be functional for 20 or 30 years.

Tim Frazier, who oversees the energy department's radioisotope power systems project, agreed that the production and isolation of plutonium-238 creates the most nuclear waste.

"The least dirty parts are already out there," at Argonne National Laboratory-West, he said. "The other parts of the process are dirty by nature."

If the project is consolidated in Idaho, the energy department has said it will build a new $230 million processing facility. That would be a unique opportunity for the program, which so far has moved into existing buildings, Frazier said.

Other residents said they worry that if the local laboratory gets the plutonium operation, it could be excluded from getting other energy department programs in the future. Some also fear the operation would take up too much space in the Advanced Test Reactor to allow for the current production of medical isotopes.

But two people at the meeting voiced support for moving plutonium production to Idaho because of its importance to space exploration.

"When I heard the DOE wanted to move the plutonium-238 program to Idaho, I said 'Whoopee,' because I knew exactly what those (space batteries) did," said Nick Nichols, an amateur astronomer and a former INEEL communications manager.