A comparison between the initial reaction rates of nanometric and commercial Nail has been studied in four test reactions: 1) hydrogenolysis of chlorobenzene; 2) selec-tive reduction of cinnamaldehyde to cinnamyl alcohol; 3)metallation of dimethyl sulfoxide; and 4) catalytic hydroge-nation ofolefins. The experimental results indicate that when Nail is used as a chemical reagent in the first three reactions,the initial reaction rates of nano-NaH is 230, 120 and 110 times higher than those of the commercial ones respectively,and it is in agreement with the difference in specific surface areas between these two forms of Nail. When Nail is used as a catalyst component together with Cp2TiCl2 in the fourth reaction, catalyst with nano-NaH gives extremely high activity in the hydrogenation of olefins, while the one with commercial Nail gives no activity at all even ifa large amount of the commercial Nail is used to make the total surface area equivalent to that of nano-NaH. Thus, it is evident that although large specific surface area is important for nano-Nail to be used as a catalyst component, high surface energy with surface defects seems to be more important. The largespecific surface and the activated surface of nano-NaH withhigh surface energy should be the main factors for thei rextremely high chemical reactivity, while whether the former or the latter one plays a leading role depends on the type of reactions involved.