The conductive coating technique is also used with 34W energy-saving T12 lamps. Although I didn't know it was used to allow the use of a higher krypton content in the F32T8 lamps! Come to think of it, that's a pretty clever idea!
Vince: The idea of using krypton, was to use only krypton as an alternative to argon. However, because its higher ignition voltage, 25% of the argon was remained to facilitate starting, but the european T8s still limited to preheat or electronic ballast, so the american added this conductive coating to their T8s, and so could use more krypton and still get even lower starting voltage than T12 with pure argon.
And as Joseph stated the F32T8 rapidstarts have a higher OCV than the F40T12 rapidstarts (But i still think that the conductive coating is the primery reason).
I think that the american F34T12, have also krypton, if they have also this conductive coating, and therefore have lower wattage (And light output) than F40T12, as it remained in T12 format and krypton have lower arc voltage.
Because of this the F34T12 seems to be similar in some ways, to the british 8ft 100W energy saving T12, which have also lower wattage (And light output) than the original 8ft 125W T12, because it remained as T12 and not reduced to T8.