The NPF houses the shielded structures, process systems, and support facilities used to extract medical isotopes from uranium targets that have been irradiated in the MAPLE reactors. The liquid radioactive waste from the extraction process is then solidified into a safe and environmentally acceptable solid waste material for long-term storage at the Chalk River Waste Management Areas. Connecting corridors link the NPF to each MAPLE reactor building. Uranium targets irradiated in the MAPLE reactors are transferred in a shielded flask to the NPF through these corridors.

The bank of hot cells in the NPF has five workstations for processing the irradiated targets to recover the medical radioisotopes Molybdenum-99, Xenon-133 and Iodine-131 and to process the resulting wastes. All operations in the hot cells are done remotely from outside the cell with master-slave manipulators. The recovered medical radioisotopes are shipped to MDS Nordion in Ottawa, Ontario for further purification, processing and distribution to pharmaceutical companies.