Every few hours, two furnaces in a New Hampshire office park quietly transform batches of taupe-colored powder into rough ingots.

每隔几个小时，新罕布什尔州一处办公园区内的两座熔炉就会悄无声息地将一批批灰褐色粉末转化为粗糙的金属锭。

These mottled chunks of metal, about the size of a few bricks, ultimately will be used to make electric vehicle motors or maybe a fighter jet.

这些大小相当于几块砖的斑驳金属块最终将被用于制造电动汽车的电机，或者可能用于战斗机。

This is what rare-earth processing looks like in the United States, where university researchers and start-ups are trying to wrest a slice of this small but vital industry from China.

这就是美国的稀土加工：大学研究人员和初创企业正试图从中国手中夺取这个规模虽小却至关重要的产业的一席之地。

Rare earths are a family of elements toward the bottom of the periodic table, with tongue-twister names like neodymium and dysprosium. They are used in powerful magnets, lasers, M.R.I. machines and other instruments.

稀土是一族位于元素周期表下部的元素，名称拗口，如钕和镝。它们被用于制造强力磁铁、激光、核磁共振成像(M.R.I.)设备以及其他仪器。

And while they are not actually rare, they are difficult to process into usable forms. China refines more than 90 percent of the world’s rare earths, a level of control that is of growing concern to Western governments and businesses.

尽管它们其实并不稀有，加工成可用形式却非常困难。中国精炼了全球超过90%的稀土，这种控制程度正日益引起西方政府和企业的担忧。

The United States was a big player in this industry until the mid-1990s, but China’s robust industrial policy, along with looser environmental regulations, allowed companies based there to establish a dominant position and sell metals and magnets for a lot less than suppliers elsewhere. Over time, many rare-earth miners and processors outside China withered away.

直到20世纪90年代中期，美国还是这一行业的重要参与者，但中国强有力的产业政策加上较为宽松的环境法规令中国企业确立了主导地位，并以远低于其他供应商的价格销售金属和磁体。随着时间推移，中国以外的许多稀土矿商和加工企业逐渐消亡。

There is too little money to be made in rare earths for the elements to be of much interest to mining giants, so the challenge of re-establishing a domestic industry has fallen to small companies like Phoenix Tailings, a Boston-area start-up that runs the metal-making plant in Exeter, N.H. A handful of other companies in the United States are processing rare earths in small quantities, including MP Materials, which owns a mine in Mountain Pass, Calif., and recently began producing rare-earth metal in Fort Worth. Similar efforts are underway in Europe and Asia.

稀土元素的利润太低，难以吸引矿业巨头，因此重建本土产业的重任落在了像Phoenix Tailings这样的小型公司身上。这家位于波士顿地区的初创企业在新罕布什尔州埃克塞特运营金属制造工厂。美国还有少数几家公司在小规模加工稀土，包括拥有加州山口矿的MP Materials，该公司最近在沃思堡开始生产稀土金属。欧洲和亚洲也有类似努力正在进行。

“It’s small volumes of low-value materials that are very expensive to process,” said Elsa Olivetti, a materials science and engineering professor at M.I.T. “Meaning it’s hard to make money.”

“这是小批量、低价值材料的加工，成本却非常高，”麻省理工学院材料科学与工程教授埃尔莎·奥利维蒂说。“这意味着很难赚钱。”

Phoenix Tailings’ New Hampshire operation is about two months old, housed in a converted medical device plant. The company buys metric-ton bags of powder — a mixture of neodymium and praseodymium bound with oxygen — from mining and refining companies in the United States, South America and Australia. It funnels that flour-like material into a drying oven and eventually into furnaces that heat it to the temperature of volcanic lava.

Phoenix Tailings在新罕布什尔州的工厂投入运营约两个月，位于一栋改建的医疗器械工厂内。公司从美国、南美和澳大利亚的采矿与精炼公司购买成吨重的粉末袋——钕和镨的氧化物。然后将这种面粉状物质送入干燥炉，最终进入加热至火山熔岩温度的熔炉。

This circuit takes up less than 15,000 square feet and is designed to generate no emissions other than those associated with the electricity Phoenix Tailings uses. The closed-loop design distinguishes this process from the more energy-intensive techniques used in China, where workers scoop up molten metal with ladles. That approach releases perfluorocarbons, potent greenhouse gases that do not break down easily.

整个流程占地不到1.5万平方英尺，设计上除公司使用的电力相关排放外不产生其他排放。这种闭环设计使其有别于中国更为能源密集的技术——中国工人需要勺取熔融金属，这种方式会释放持久性极强的温室气体全氟化碳。

Phoenix Tailings used to buy some raw material that came from China but hasn’t relied on that country in several years, said Nick Myers, the company’s chief executive.

Phoenix Tailings曾经购买部分来自中国的原料，但公司首席执行官尼克·迈尔斯表示，近年来已不再依赖中国。

“To untangle yourself from China, you have to force yourself off the original drug,” Mr. Myers said during a recent tour of the New Hampshire plant, his words tumbling out like a podcast played at 1.5 speed. “You can wean yourself off, or you can go cold turkey. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to get off.”

“要摆脱对中国依赖，你必须强迫自己戒掉最初的‘毒瘾’，”最近在新罕布什尔州工厂参观时，迈尔斯用1.5倍速播放的播客般的语速急切地说道。“你可以逐渐消解，也可以直接戒断。但归根结底，你必须彻底摆脱。”

It has been a whirlwind year for Mr. Myers, 34. His company, recently valued at $189 million, was three weeks from bankruptcy in late 2024. President Trump’s trade war lifted the company’s fortunes, as China responded to higher U.S. tariffs by restricting exports of rare earths. That got more investors interested in Phoenix Tailings and led new customers to place orders, putting the company on surer financial footing.

对于34岁的迈尔斯来说，这一年可谓风起云涌。他这家近期估值1.89亿美元的公司在2024年末曾距离破产仅剩三周。特朗普总统的贸易战扭转了公司命运——中国对美国更高关税的回应是限制稀土出口。这吸引了更多投资者关注Phoenix Tailings，并带来新客户订单，使公司财务状况更加稳固。

The large majority of Phoenix Tailings’ customers are in the auto industry, and a small share are U.S. defense contractors.

Phoenix Tailings的大多数客户来自汽车行业，一小部分是美国国防承包商。

The Trump administration has agreed in recent months to pour more than $1 billion into the industry, taking stakes in companies involved in mining, refining and magnet production. It also is subsidizing MP Materials products by guaranteeing the company receives a set price for them.

特朗普政府最近几个月同意向该行业投入超过10亿美元，在涉及采矿、精炼和磁体生产的公司中持股。它还通过保证固定价格的方式补贴MP Materials的产品。

Phoenix Tailings has been awarded more than $6 million in federal funding, most of it before Mr. Trump returned to power in January, and is hoping to secure more.

Phoenix Tailings已获得超过600万美元的联邦资金，其中大部分是在特朗普今年1月再次上台前获得的，目前它正寻求拿到更多资助。

“My grandmother tells me about rare-earth elements now,” Mr. Myers said. “Previously, it was a very lonely journey.”

“现在我祖母都会跟我谈论稀土元素了，”迈尔斯说。“以前，这是非常孤独的旅程。”

Mr. Myers co-founded Phoenix Tailings in 2019 after meeting Tomás Villalón Jr., the company’s chief technology officer, at a Bible study retreat outside Boston the year before. Mr. Myers was working for a genomic sequencing company while Dr. Villalón was finishing his doctorate in materials engineering at Boston University. The pair identified rare-earth processing as an opportunity during a late-night discussion about markets they found interesting, Dr. Villalón recalled.

迈尔斯与公司首席技术官小托马斯·巴拉隆于2018年在波士顿郊外的一个圣经学习活动上结识，次年一起创办了Phoenix Tailings。当时迈尔斯在一家基因测序公司工作，巴拉隆则即将完成波士顿大学材料工程博士学位。据巴拉隆回忆，两人在深夜讨论感兴趣的市场机会时，将稀土加工确定为突破方向。

They eventually teamed up with three others and built a prototype of their processing system in Dr. Villalón’s backyard in Cambridge, Mass., home to M.I.T., where two of the five founders earned their undergraduate degrees. “I don’t know how legal it was,” Mr. Myers said.

他们最终联合其他三位伙伴，在麻省剑桥市（麻省理工所在地，五位创始人中有两位本科毕业于该校）巴拉隆家的后院搭建起加工系统原型。“我都不知道这是否合法，”迈尔斯坦言。

Investors in the company include the Central Intelligence Agency’s venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, and BMW’s venture capital arm.

该公司投资者包括中央情报局的风险投资基金In-Q-Tel，以及宝马的风投部门。

Metal making is the last step in the long and often fragmented process that is rare-earth refining. Eventually, Phoenix Tailings aims to control all of those stages, taking in waste from iron mining — known as tailings — removing the rare earths and separating them into individual elements to be made into metal.

稀土精炼过程漫长且常常被分割为多个环节，金属冶炼是这个流程的最后一步。长期来看，Phoenix Tailings希望控制所有环节：接收铁矿开采产生的废料（即尾矿），提取其中的稀土，并将其分离成单个元素，最终制成金属材料。

It will not be easy. Tom Lograsso, who directs the Critical Materials Innovation Hub at Ames National Laboratory in Iowa, described the technical challenge of metal making as “undoing what Mother Nature has naturally done.”

这绝非易事。爱荷华州埃姆斯国家实验室的关键材料创新中心主任汤姆·洛格拉索将金属冶炼的技术挑战形容为“逆转自然母亲的造化之功”。

Much of the pollution risk associated with rare-earth production occurs in the early stages, as companies remove thorium, a radioactive element that is not one of the rare earths but is almost always found mixed into them. The thorium and the powerful acids used to extract it need to be disposed of safely.

稀土生产的大部分污染风险集中在前期阶段——企业需去除钍元素，这种放射性元素虽非稀土，却常与稀土共生）。钍以及用于提取它的强酸都必须被安全处置。

Then there is the matter of making money. China’s grip on the industry is so tight that it can be difficult to answer even seemingly simple questions, such as how much demand there is for rare-earth metal.

接下来就是盈利问题。中国对该行业的掌控如此严密，甚至连看似简单的问题都难有定论，比如稀土金属的实际需求量究竟多大。

“Estimates vary widely, and the market is difficult to assess due to gray- and black-market trade,” the Atlantic Council, a Washington research organization, said in a report this year, referring to the value of the global rare earths trade.

华盛顿智库大西洋理事会在今年的一份报告中指出：“由于灰市与黑市交易的存在，全球稀土贸易价值评估差异巨大，市场难以准确测算。”

Of particular concern for Phoenix Tailings is that China has been known to sell rare-earth metal for less than it costs to produce it.

Phoenix Tailings特别担忧的是，中国向来以低于生产成本的价格出售稀土金属。

“We chose to do the hard path because we weren’t focused monetarily at first,” said Mr. Myers, who incorporated prayer into early board meetings.

“我们选择走一条困难的道路，因为一开始我们并没有把重心放在赚钱上，”迈尔斯说，他在早期董事会会议中还加入了祈祷环节。

Phoenix Tailings的首席执行官尼克·迈尔斯表示，“要摆脱对中国依赖，你必须强迫自己戒掉最初的‘毒瘾’。”

But metal prices have risen in recent months, he said, as Western companies have sought supplies outside China. A poster showing the planned capacity of the New Hampshire plant had been taped over three times. As of early December, it read 1,000 metric tons, equal to about 1 percent of global demand by Mr. Myers’s estimate.

不过他表示，随着西方公司试图在中国之外寻找供应来源，近几个月来金属价格有所上涨。新罕布什尔州工厂计划产能的海报已修改了三次。截至12月初，数字写的是1000公吨，按迈尔斯的估算，约占全球需求的1%。

“If you see everything from tailings to metal, you have the capacity to be able to mitigate price fluctuations,” Mr. Myers said.

“若能实现从尾矿到金属的全流程覆盖，就有能力应对价格波动，”迈尔斯表示。

A big question is whether the U.S. government will continue to subsidize the domestic industry, and at what level. It will be hard for companies to compete with China without significant intervention, said Dr. Olivetti, the M.I.T. professor. “Traditional market mechanisms are going to struggle.”

一个大问题是，美国政府是否会继续补贴国内产业，以及补贴到什么程度。麻省理工学院的奥利维蒂表示，如果没有重大的政府干预，企业将很难与中国竞争。“传统的市场机制会很吃力。”