Radium bromide the air causes this luminescence. Radium bromide is also very dangerous since the crystals occasionally explode. Helium gas evolved from alpha particles can accumulate within the crystals which cause them to weaken and rupture. Another property of radium bromide is its ability to crystallize from an aqueous solution. It forms a dihydrate, very similar to barium bromide. The chemical radium bromide is not found in nature; it is created. To extract radium from uranium or pitchblende ores, the most common practice is called the Curie method which it involves two major stages. The first stage is a chemical treatment to
Radium Hill the Radium and Rare Earth Treatment Company N.L. which continued operations there until 1931. The company also built a treatment plant in 1923 at Dry Creek near Adelaide to produce radium bromide for medical applications from the Radium Hill ore, however this proved to be uneconomic and both sites had ceased operations by 1932. Activity recommenced after World War II, with a Department of Mines geological survey in 1944 and exploration and drilling work done in 1946-1947. In March 1952 the Commonwealth and the South Australian governments signed a cost plus uranium supply contract with the UK-USA Combined Development Agency,