The main goal of our article is to reveal unexpected but intriguing analogies arising between optical solitons and nuclear physics, which still remain hidden from us. We consider the main cornerstones of the concept of nonlinear optics of nuclear reactions and the well-dressed repulsive-core solitons. On the base of this model, we reveal the most intriguing properties of the nonlinear tunneling of nucleus-like solitons and the soliton selfinduced sub-barrier transparency effect. We describe novel interesting and stimulating analogies between the interaction of nucleus-like solitons on the repulsive barrier and nuclear sub-barrier reactions. The main finding of our study concerns the conservation of total number of nucleons (or the baryon number) in nuclear-like soliton reactions. We show that inelastic interactions among well-dressed repulsive-core solitons arise only when a “cloud” of “dressing” spectral side-bands appears in the frequency spectra of the solitons. This property of nucleus-like solitons is directly related to the nuclear density distribution described by the dimensionless small shape-squareness parameter. Thus the Fourier spectra of nucleus-like solitons are similar to the nuclear form factors. We show that the nuclear-like reactions between well-dressed solitons are realized by “exchange” between “particle-like” side-bands in their spectra.