This design is a bit better. Each core has two faces touching coolant so with 4 less cores it produces more power than the previous layout. Still hugely inefficient
My suspicion is that - well again there are a number of cores around the edges that are only touching one coolant block - removing some cores from the edges might actually boost total power out again.
# - casing
. - coolant
x - fuel rod
Code:
###########
#.xx.xx.xx#
#xx.xx.xx.#
#x.xx.xx.x#
#.xx.xx.xx#
#xx.xx.xx.#
#x.xx.xx.x#
#.xx.xx.xx#
#xx.xx.xx.#
#x.xx.xx.x#
###########
I built this as 11x7x11 rather than 11x9x11 (I presume that with 11x11x9, 9 is the height of the reactor?) Why 7? My derp. Now I need to rebuild higher.
At any rate I got 53.8kRF/t, burning an ingot every 32seconds (34MRF/ingot). With 270 fuel rod blocks.
By contrast, my 11x7x11 reactor,
here, achieves 25kRF/t, burns an ingot every 210seconds for an fuel efficiency of 105MRF/ingot). with a mere 40 fuel rods.