Radioactivity in Soils of Kosovo and Radiological Implications

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1-In line 71 (Gamma Vision which is a data acquisition and analysis program) need a reference.

2-line 143(Table 1. 226Ra, 232Th, 137Cs and 40K concentrations in soils at different countries (in Bq/kg); The authors made a comparison with many different countries using the references from 40-47)  from 2006 to 2019, where there is a modern data , which can be used in that comparison like:

·         The dependence of natural radioactivity levels and its radiological hazards on the texture of agricultural soil in Upper Egypt, A. M. A. Mostafa et.al. Environmental Earth Sciences (2020 79 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-020                2020

·         Soil–soybean transfer factor of natural radionuclides in different soil textures and the assessment of committed effective dose, MAM Uosif, ZA Alrowaili, R Elsaman, AMA Mostafa Radiation Protection Dosimetry 188 (4), 529-535

·         Conceptualization of arid region radioecology strategies for agricultural ecosystems of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), PrasoonRaj, et.al. 2022, Science of The Total Environment Volume 832, 1 August 2022, 154965.

·          Soil-to-plant transfer factors of 238U and 232Th in rice from Ezillo paddy fields, Ebonyi State, Nigeria, Fredrick OghenebrorieUgbede, et.al. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity Volume 233, July 2021, 106606.

3- In line 177, Assessment of radiological hazards, It is better to list all radiological hazards  for all samples in a table.  

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript number ID: applsci-1913128 was developed to ascertain the presence of main radionuclides from natural and artificial radioactivity in the soil of Kosovo, using gamma-ray spectroscopy. The mean of calculated values for gamma index (Iγ), external hazard index (Hex), absorbed dose rate (ADR), annual gonadal dose rate (AGDE), annual effective dose rate (AEDE) and excess lifetime cancer risk (ELCR) were calculated to assess any possible radiological risk. Quite a lot of details and discussions are not provided, and so, I am identifying some interesting information to improve the article. This will enrich the readers' experience, and enhance the value of the publication, which in its present format is very low: 1.     The authors should ensure the reliability of their study. 2.     The authors should refer in more detail and in clearly way the advantages of their methodology and summarize possible limitations. 3.     In general Introduction has a good structure. It should be enriched with a paragraph explaining the correlation between the following sections. 4.     More details about the sample collection and analysis are needed. 5.     Improvement in English write-up is required.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The article concerns the dose assessment for natural and artificial radionuclides found in the soil of Kosovo. A novelty is the use of a hybrid method (SGS-ANN) for simulation. Moreover, the measured data can be used for comparison with other data in the world.

Before accepting, however, some points need to be clarified:

- No performance evaluation for simulations like MAE, RMSE, R, etc ...

- Figures with correlations between measured (test data set) and simulated data for all radionuclides (one by one) will be useful.

- Please add the average values of simulated data in Table 1. Also, the ranges will be helpful for both, measured and simulated.

- What is the contribution of Cs-137 to the dose? Now, only raw data from soil are presented without dose estimation.

 

Minor comment:

Citation to R should look like this (in R use the command: citation ("base")): R Core Team (2022). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for  Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/.

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

Dear authors,

Congratulations for your relevant study. Please find in the attachment some comments and suggestions to help improving the manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors addressed all my suggestions. Thus, in my opinion the paper can be accepted now in the present form.