We thank the reviewer for assessing the manuscript and making constructive comments. We notice an overall positive feedback which we interpret as encouragement to publish the basics of a widely used technique for the purpose of standardising procedures. Please find our reply below in italic.

"The word "background" has two different meanings in the text.... source of confusion". We agree. We will call the background of the Ge detector ‘background current’. The background induced by the sample-detector interaction will be called ‘background counting’.

The typo in line 261 willl be corrected.

We thank the reviewer for assessing the manuscript and making constructive comments. We notice an overall positive feedback which we interpret as encouragement to publish the basics of a widely used technique for the purpose of standardising procedures. Please find our reply below in italic.

1. 22 : ‘accumulated damage’. I don’t think accumulated damage is accurate, it should be replaced by ‘absorbed dose’ - agreed.
2. 49-50: ‘For example, the intensity of a 1 MeV photon penetrating SiO2 is reduced for 50% at a penetration depth of 4.7 cm’. This statement is problematic as SiO2 may take different forms. Quartz generally has a density of 2.65 g. cm^-3– I assume the authors want to mention quartz – rather than 2.32 g. cm^-3. The density of silica can range from 2.2 g cm^-3 to 2.65 g cm². A typical value under normal conditions is 2.32 g cm² which we used in our example for a 1MeV photon.
3. 53: ‘Although gamma rays make only a small contribution to the radiation dose compared to alpha and beta particles’. I find this statement to be slightly problematic;

first, because when working on sand-sized quartz grains one generally removes the alpha-irradiated layer of the grains – this argument does not invalidate the statement

second, because effective alpha dose rates are generally of the same order of magnitude as the gamma contribution (but it depends on grain size) – agreed, the comparison to alpha must be removed. The sentence then reads: ...make only a small contribution to the radiation dose compared to beta particles...

and third because the beta to gamma ratio depends on the radioelement distribution. In (rather rare) cases where Th is the main radiation source, gamma dose rates can be greater than beta dose rates. We find this statement problematic. The radiation sources in terrestrial sediments originate from earth's upper crust where the activities of U and Th are balanced, hence equal. Thorium is the main radio-source when part of it is unsupported due to sediment particle influx, e.g. deep sea sediments receiving additional particles from the continental slope (Stokes et al. 2003, QSR). 

1. 180-181: ‘Because U and Th constitute around 30% of the total annual dose rate (Aitken, 1985)’. This fraction is, however, highly variable (see e.g. Ankjaergaard and Murray, 2007) - we agree that ~30% contribution of U and Th to the total dose rate is a rather crude and potentially misleading information. On the other hand, in the context of the sentence about discrepancies between laboratories when determining activity concentrations it is still a useful (crude) estimate for the consequences of inaccuracies. Also, the study of Ankjaergaad and Murray (2007) focuses on beta and gamma dose rates, whereas here, the alpha contribution is included in the estimate. We think the statement useful in the context of the discrepancies mentioned.