The US hydrogen economy, including hydrogen produced at commercial nuclear power plants that can potentially be “exported” from the facility and monetised, could lead to an estimated $750bn per year in revenue and a cumulative 3.4 million jobs, a plan by the Department of Energy has concluded.

The hydrogen programme plan says industry is starting to invest in large-scale hydrogen projects in a number of regions of the US. This includes first-of-a-kind nuclear-to-hydrogen projects in multiple states.

The resulting hydrogen will initially be used at the nuclear power plant where it is produced, but it could eventually be exported from the plant and sold to other industries.

Earlier this week, Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy and Idaho National Laboratory said they would use more than $10m in federal funding to demonstrate a system that uses a nuclear plant’s steam and electricity to split water, producing hydrogen in a way that could “transform the nuclear energy industry”.