He laughs humourlessly. "It may already be too late for that – but you're right, I'd like to get this straightened out before anything worse happens."

I don't know what I look like to you but it sure as hell isn't someone who's good at bullshitting science, so I am just going to handwave him setting out to tell her as much about energon as he can – he's not an expert, but he knows enough, and Val is presumably smart enough to ask the right questions when something she needs to know isn't something that would have occurred to him. He explains the fool's energon in a little more detail, too, although he hasn't been given the precise ins and outs of that one – "Wouldn't want me figuring out a way around it, after all."