Is there any evidence, *any evidence at all*, that nascent hydrogen actually exists?
You should read the Solution to nascent hydrogen challenge by Juris Meija &amp; Alessandro D’Ulivo Link. The authors vehemently deny the existence of any nascent hydrogen.

You will find that the concept of nascent hydrogen and nascent oxygen is still taught in some Indian chemistry textbooks. This term has literally vanished from US &amp; European chemistry books. I just thought to search an elite journal JACS  and this term is present in 2011 in the abstract of

Highly Selective Ammonia Synthesis from Nitrate with Photocatalytically Generated Hydrogen on CuPd/TiO2, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 5, 1150-1152


  "The continuous generation of nascent hydrogen atoms on the surface of
  the CuPd nanoalloy, where Cu and Pd are homogeneously mixed, led to
  the high selectivity for ammonia."


Well, this is exactly a classical example of the usage of nascent hydrogen when Zn could reduce nitrate ions in an alkaline medium. The texts of 1940s describe those experiments very well. See Mellor's Treatise of Inorganic Chemistry.

Another 2012 RSC journal Chemical reduction of an aqueous suspension of graphene oxide by nascent hydrogen