after some testing, it seems that liquidcts are the best option for steam extraction. the other extraction option it a wooden waterproof pipe, but even with 100 mj/t supply its not match for liquiducts.Active liquiducts extract a limited number of buckets per tick. Steam funnels discard steam over a certain internal capacity, and I'm fairly certain Way's design suffers from that. Saice's nuclear reactor doesn't really suffer from that because nuclear reactors don't output their entire buffer at once.
the mechanical pipes, when combined with liquiducts extracting, dupe liquid they carry, which result in twice output. this also makes a great opportunity for loops...
test was run on Infamy 1.0 modpack, and may not be true for RR.