Nevada Test Site
Troops are shown participating in exercise Desert Rock I in November 1951. It was the first U.S. nuclear field exercise conducted on land; troops shown are a mere 6 miles from the blast at the Nevada Test Site - now known as the Nevada National Security Site. A scare at the site ended without incident Tuesday afternoon after federal and local authorities determined that a suspicious item found there was "non-threatening." Wikimedia Commons

A Nevada nuclear scare ended without incident Tuesday afternoon after federal and local authorities determined that a suspicious item found at a nuclear site in the Silver State was "non-threatening."

Federal and local crews responded to the Nevada National Security Site, located about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, on Tuesday after a suspicious item was found at about 7 p.m. EST near a factory at the site, Dave Taylor, a spokesman for the site, told CNN.

But the item was found to be "non-threatening" by 10 p.m. EST by authorities, Taylor told the network.

"A suspicious item was found outside the Device Assembly Facility security perimeter fence and we have determined that it involves a non-threatening item," Taylor said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper.

"We acted out of an abundance of caution," Dante Pistone, another site spokesman, told CNN. "There will be a lot of follow-up on this."

Taylor added that he had no information about how the item was found or how it may have come to be at the site, according to the Review-Journal.

The National Nuclear Security Administration released a statement alerting the media to the situation while the nature of the item was still being investigated, but it had not provided further details as of 8:45 p.m. EST., according to KLAS-TV Las Vegas.

The Nevada National Security Site - formerly known as the Nevada Test Site - spans 1,375 square miles, and it has been used as a nuclear weapon test site for several decades, according to CNN.